Biennial 



Elections 



Bridgman 



D. C. Heath & Co. 

Publishers 

Boston 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No.. 

sheiilhLma 

- — — — £>* 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 



RAYMOND L. BRIDGMAN. 



Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, tor the good or evil side; 

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, 

Parts the goats upon the left hand and the sheep upon the right, 

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light 

Lowell. 



! APR 3C1896) 



BOSTON, U. S. A. 
D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY. 

1896. 

\ 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Raymond L. Bridgman. 



Hntbcrsttg ^Jrrss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. Introduction 5 

IT. Why Annual Elections are Best 7 

III. Signs of the Times 17 

IV. The Green Legislature 22 

V. Education by Frequent Elections 27 

VI. State Issues Ignored 33 

VII. The Business Men 39 

VIII. Labor's Vital Interest 51 

IX. The Unit of Time 61 

X. Other States 04 

XI. The Expense 75 

XII. The Country Towns 79 

XIII. This will not be Settled until it is Settled 

Right 83 

XIV. Tins Last Campaign 86 

XV. Corporations and Biennials 91 

XVI. The Politicians and the Lobby 102 

XVIL The Issue not Understood 107 

XVIII. What is the Gain? 113 

XIX. Biennial Elections and Legislative Sessions . 115 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 



I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

In voting upon the proposed amendment to the Con- 
stitution to establish biennial elections of State officers, 
councillors, and members of the legislature, the people of 
Massachusetts will pass upon a political proposition more 
important than any which has been submitted to the present 
generation. Its pervasive and permanent effects will be felt 
throughout every year of the future, if it shall be adopted, 
shaping political events in State, county, city, and town 
governments, placing the control of public offices and the 
public treasury more than ever in the hands of corrupt 
politicians and of men selfishly ambitious of distinction in 
the eyes of their fellow-citizens, subordinating the interests 
of the many to the will of the wealthy few, strengthening 
the grasp of corporations and monopolies upon the neces- 
sities of living of the whole people, increasing the present 
indifference which is itself one cause of the existing de- 
mand for biennials, and which is the most powerful agent 
in the present unsatisfactory condition of municipal gov- 
ernment, stilling all adequate discussion of State affairs 
in the heat of congressional and presidential campaigns, 



6 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

obstructing seriously the State's development by the forces 
which have hitherto made Massachusetts prosperous, and 
which will continue to keep her in the forefront of progress 
if their beneficent activity is not checked by this unwise 
effort to cramp and to reduce political discussion and effort 
by the people, preventing the necessary development of 
political judgment and decisiveness among the mass of the 
voters, restricting the assimilation and Americanizing of a 
large mass of foreign-born citizens, sacrificing the political 
power and importance of a large number of towns all over 
the State, tying the hands of the people so that they will 
not be able to help themselves, making it possible for any 
powerful combination of interests which can control one- 
third of the House to prevent, forever, the people from 
regaining the opportunity to call their representatives to 
an annual accounting or to express their will annually 
regarding pending issues, fostering the exaltation of polit- 
ical bosses who have been hitherto unknown; in short, 
corrupting, weakening, dwarfing, and perverting political 
forces in a thousand ways, and all for no good but the 
indulgence of selfish ease and indifference, whose very 
indulgence will be the cause of its own ruin amid the 
misfortunes of the Commonwealth. This is the momentous 
issue upon which the people must pass. It overshadows 
all other political issues of the year combined. No other 
question which is presented approaches this in its vital 
hold upon the unborn generations. No other goes so deep 
into the principles upon which our government is founded. 
No other, settled amiss, will bring so many unfortunate 
consequences upon the weaker classes, or will so seriously, 
for all time, retard the healthful growth of the State. 



II. 

WHY ANNUAL ELECTIONS ARE BEST. 

At tlie bottom of all the agitation over the frequency of 
elections lies the inherent nature of the State itself as a 
political body. In that nature is found ample reason for a 
frequent choice of officials, and for a frequent expression of 
the popular judgment upon the needs of the people. 

It is not incumbent upon the friends of frequent elections 
to assume the task of demonstrating their necessity. The 
burden of proof lies upon those who want biennials, and 
until they have established their case it would be wholly 
fitting for their opponents to await their motion. But the 
people are the court of last resort. They are not likely to 
stand upon the logical order of procedure, but are possibly 
in danger of voting for the change unless the reasons for 
frequent elections are reaffirmed. 

Yet the friends of frequent elections need not be slow in 
assuming the burden of proving that annual elections are 
better for the State than biennials. They can easily afford 
to sacrifice so much of their technical advantage for the 
sake of meeting any questioners who would like, after all, 
to know, just as if there were no history in the matter, 
why elections once in a year are better for the people than 
elections once in two years. 

The reason lies in the nature of the political body as an 
organism of intense vital energy, of ceaseless activity, of 



8 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

countless wants, and of rapid progress. This body is con- 
cerned for the well-being of every individual member. It is 
governed by the strongest wills carrying out what the judg- 
ment of the majority of the people has determined to be for 
the good of the whole. Its administration is for the benefit 
of no special class, but for the advantage of all. Its courts 
are not for one quality of suitors at the expense of others, 
but for all upon equal terms. Its will is expressed in its 
statutes after the representatives of the people have become 
informed upon its needs as a single political body, and its 
will is carried into execution by its officers. 

But the vital part in the development of the political 
body is the place where the information upon the needs of 
the body is conveyed to the representatives of the people, 
and where the will of the people, expressed through their 
representatives, is crystallized into statutes. 

The purpose of government is to maintain a healthful 
political body, and to promote its development as fast as 
is possible by the forces inherent in it, — forces which were 
not created by man. Good government will remove obstruc- 
tions to the activity of these forces, and permit the develop- 
ment of the political body to be as rapid and as healthful 
as the divine energy within it demands. Faster than this 
there can be no growth. Any growth slower than this is 
due to obstructions which have been placed in the way of 
that energy by human hands. 

Now, the energy within this political body is so intense 
in its activity that, with the present average human selfish- 
ness and the common indifference to political needs, — 
which are a totally different thing from political contests 
and quarrels, — the wants of the political body are never 



WHY ANNUAL ELECTIONS ARE BEST. 9 

nearly supplied. As in private affairs, the physical, men- 
tal, artistic, and spiritual needs of each person are never all 
satisfied, as growing wealth only adds to the number of 
needs as the ability to satisfy them increases, and as every 
forward step in civilization brings an entirely new set of 
needs to be appeased, so in political affairs the urgent 
demands for more things to be done runs far ahead of the 
ability of the people, as members of the political body, to 
supply. 

It is pertinent to observe here, too, that in the present 
crude stage of even our best civilization, our wants as a 
political body are felt, most of all, on the material side. 
Faster transportation, taller buildings, wider boulevards, 
greater docks and harbors, bigger mills, more profuse orna- 
mentation of public and private structures, more speed and 
more splendid show, — these are the things we are striv- 
ing most for in our private and political capacity. Yet 
vast unexplored realms of progress lie beyond these fields, — 
realms into which the organized community is as sure to 
enter as it is to make progress at all. 

But even at present the demand for political action in its 
true, non-partisan sense, is far in excess of the people to 
satisfy. The political body is out at the elbows and down 
at the heels in comparison with what it should be with 
even its present knowledge. Schoolhouses, even in Boston 
itself, are far inadequate to the urgent necessities of the 
people. Highways all over the State are in a condition 
befitting primitive, barbaric man. The aggressive force of 
Christianity is so feeble and the self-sacrifice of its pro- 
fessors is so undeveloped that they are afraid to admit even 
all self-supporting immigrants who would come. In every 



10 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

city and town the public needs are ahead of the public 
ability to supply them, and the existence of so many and 
so heavy city and town debts is only one infallible demon- 
stration that, as a political body, we are not able to satisfy 
our needs. 

But those needs keep multiplying, no matter how loudly 
we may cry halt, no matter how foolishly we may suppose 
that when the present exigency is over the pressure will be 
relaxed. If it is not one thing, it is another, and the con- 
stancy with which municipal tax bills maintain their high 
level is a yearly demonstration that the political body will 
always present imperative demands upon its individual 
members. 

Above the municipal needs stands the State as a whole. 
Her demands must be faced by the legislature, and it is 
only what most men will doubtless admit, that the many 
needs of the political body are but faintly comprehended by 
those who are not brought into personal contact with them 
at the State House. A more forceful truth, however, is 
that not a single person at the State House can have a full 
realization of the extent, magnitude, and multiplicity of 
these needs. Members of the legislature have their partic- 
ular committee work to attend to. Outside of that, they 
have no means of learning the details of hundreds of 
matters which are presented every session for legislative 
action. Most subjects of such action are not explained at 
all ; they are either voted through or voted down without 
debate. So the members are poorly situated to grasp the 
volume and meaning of the petitions and bills presented. 
The presiding officers cannot do it ; their duty is to see that 
the parliamentary form of procedure is preserved and to 



WHY ANNUAL ELECTIONS AKE BEST. 11 

dispatch business rapidly. The clerks of the branches can- 
not do it; they are loaded with merely clerical detail. 
The representatives of the press cannot do it; they only 
skim the surface, and note what is of most importance or 
most sensational. Especially, since business has increased 
so much in volume in recent years, they cannot mention it 
with an approach to their former thoroughness, and the 
papers would not print it, if they did. The governor can- 
not do it. He has no means of learning the facts, save 
as he takes exceptional care in case of a much disputed 
measure. 

No, the plain truth is that the activity of the State is so 
tremendous and so pervasive that not a man in its borders 
has anything like an adequate conception of even the com- 
paratively small phase which appears at the State House ; 
but we all live on while this energy bears us onward, just 
as the vital energy of our bodies carries its effects into every 
nerve and fibre while we are unconscious of it. 

The political energy, however, is nominally under the 
control of the people. Hence the vital importance of allow- 
ing it free scope. To illustrate the wide fields of action 
which are traversed by the legislature, let brief mention of 
a few be laid before the biennialist who believes that elec- 
tions once a year are sufficient, and that legislative sessions 
once in two years are often enough for the transaction of 
the State's legitimate business. The administration itself, 
with its hundreds of officers and employees, must be watched 
constantly and changed frequently in order to carry out the 
will of the people expressed in their laws ; the entire field 
of agriculture must be watched and its interests promoted; 
the manifold labor interests briii£ much business to the 



12 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

legislature every year; the defensive force of the State, 
embodied in its militia, must be kept in efficient condition; 
the demands of the Civil Service must be satisfied or the 
people sufler; all corporations must be regulated in the 
interest of the people, and their development along right 
lines must be promoted ; professions, like medicine, den- 
tistry, and pharmacy, which are under State supervision, 
must be kept up to the standards of the times ; gas and 
electric light development must be held subservient to the 
public good ; the harbors and public lands of the State must 
be constantly supervised ; the highways are a recent and 
expensive charge; the fish and game interests frequently 
ask for legislative intervention; insurance companies and 
policy-holders are always at the State House when the 
legislature is in session; liquor and lumber, parks and 
sewage and water supplies, — all press for attention; prisons 
and charities, libraries and records, railroads and savings 
banks make frequent demands upon the time and wisdom 
of our solons. There is the vast field of legislation close to 
the private interests of hundreds of thousands, and vital to 
the development of the whole State, of which only a faint 
idea is conveyed by the Public Statutes, — elections, taxes, 
municipal affairs, religious movements, education, public 
means of intercommunication, the regulation of many 
trades, the punishment of frauds and perjuries, the internal 
police of the State, the entire field of real and personal 
property control and transmission, guardianships and trusts, 
family relations, all court proceedings, crimes and punish- 
ments, and many other variations of these classes whose 
enumeration would occupy pages. 

Something upon each of these matters is almost sure to 



WHY ANNUAL ELECTIONS ARE BEST. 13 

be presented each year ; usually many measures relating to 
some of them are offered. These measures, as a rule, repre- 
sent the genuine needs of the people, which demand prompt 
attention ; for people do not apply to the legislature until 
they are forced to do so. Still further, most of the matters 
of every year are new. Nothing could be further from the 
truth than the frequent assertions that legislative measures 
are a lot of old bills and petitions which are brought in, 
year after year. The charge may be fully and fairly dis- 
missed with a flat denial. 

Now, it is very clear from the nature of our government 
that its most vital spot is in the legislature. With such 
a mass of new and important business every year, it is of 
the first importance that the representatives of the people 
come as freshly from the people as does the business upon 
which they are to pass. Otherwise, the legislature is 
behind the times. It is out of date. It was not elected 
upon the issues which are pending, but upon those of a 
year old, which are out of date at the second session of a 
biennial legislature. Thus much for the business side of 
the question. 

But a further important consideration is the sense of 
responsibility of representatives to the people. This is a 
question with two distinct, contradictory sides, which ought 
to be clearly recognized and weighed. If representatives 
are elected for long terms, they are safe from a mistaken 
popular clamor which might influence them to vote against 
their judgment if they were directly exposed to it. Ebulli- 
tions of excitement pass away quickly, and a representative 
who holds for a long term may at its end have the approval 
of his constituents, though they might have condemned 



14 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

him at some previous period for acting in direct opposition 
to their will. The government has been saved from popu- 
lar passion, and the sober second thought has its rightful 
weight. 

On the other hand, a representative elected for a long 
term is beyond the reach of his constituents. They cannot 
pass upon his action until the end of his term. They may 
have very clear opinions upon the issues before the legis- 
lature, but their representative can safely act contrary to 
them. Selfish considerations may influence members to 
the utter exclusion of the public good. Not only is there 
the direct danger that the representative will yield to cor- 
rupt pressure, but there is the less positive danger that he 
will use his public office, if not corruptly, at least so as to 
benefit himself at the expense of his constituents. 

So the question is, Will the State be safer with repre- 
sentatives holding terms so long that they will not yield 
unwisely to popular excitement, or will it be safer with 
representatives holding terms so short that they will not 
defy the wishes of their constituents ? 

Only one candid answer is possible with those who have 
watched for a long time the course of legislation. The 
short term is unquestionably the safer. The occasions of 
danger from popular excitement are comparatively rare. 
The occasions from temptation to the legislator are almost 
constant. The member who feels that he will never come 
again, that, under the system of courtesy and rotation which 
prevails, some other man is sure to take his place the next 
year, is much more likely to disregard the wishes of his 
constituents than the member who feels that his re-election 
depends upon his fidelity to them. If two-year terms were 



WHY ANNUAL ELECTIONS ARE BEST. 15 

introduced, the members, to a larger extent than now, 
would be absolutely certain that they would not be re- 
elected. They would be less sensitive to the wishes of 
their constituents. They would be more susceptible to 
corrupt influences. They would be more watchful to make 
as much personal gain as possible out of their political 
careers. Self, not the public, would be more likely to be 
the chief consideration. 

Observation at the State House carries out this view 
abundantly. It is not uncommon to hear it said of certain 
members, year after year, " Oh, they will not come back 
again. They are going to make what they can out of it. 
They don't care what their constituents think. " Frequent 
returns to the people are essential to legislation in the 
interests of the people. To establish biennial terms would 
be a decided step toward robbing the people of their right- 
ful power and turning over the legislature to the manipula- 
tions of corporate wealth, to the machinations of cheap 
politicians, and to the sway of the selfish interests which 
would enslave the people for their pecuniary and political 
gain. 

Taking the State, then, in its large and true aspect as a 
political body, with countless wants which need constant 
and immediate attention, seeing how essential it is that 
the representatives should be in close contact with the 
people and be frequently accountable to them, we have a 
constructive, positive side of the case in favor of annual 
elections which may be put confidently against all excuses 
for political shiftlessness and all pleas for class favoritism 
on the other. The only problem is to educate the people 
to their true relation in the body politic, and to arouse them 



16 'biennial elections. 

to the alarming danger from clogging the currents of its 
organic activity. On the one side is dangerous ease and 
forgetfulness of duty. On the other is true self-interest 
and patriotism, involving that sacrifice and activity by 
which our liberty and prosperity were secured, and by which 
alone they can be preserved. 



ITT. 

SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

Biennial elections must be considered broadly in rela- 
tion to the times in which we live. If once the two-year 
system is adopted, it will doubtless be established for many 
years, — perhaps for one century, perhaps for two; at any 
rate, as long as the selfish influence of wealth and suicidal 
indifference to politics can control one-third of the house. 
Hereafter, if this mistake is committed, the situation will 
be reversed. Instead of the hostile forces of wealth, in- 
difference, and ignorance having to control two-thirds of 
the House, which they have finally succeeded in doing, 
hereafter they will be secure if they control only one-third. 
Hence it behooves the State to be extremely careful, for it 
may not find any place of repentance, * even though it seek 
it bitterly with tears. " 

Now, what are the significant events of our times ? On 
the one hand there is the upward movement of labor. On 
the other is the aggregation of capital. Each of these is 
accompanied by organization such as was never heard of in 
the centuries bygone. Beneath both movements, then, is 
the common form of progress by organization. Outside of 
these realms of labor and capital, the same spirit of -the 
age is everywhere 'active. Societies, clubs, leagues, unions 
and associations for all sorts of purposes, among both sexes, 
2 



18 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

are multiplying all over the country, and extending their 
ramifications into the remote villages. Organization is the 
spirit of the times. This means that the human individual, 
the ultimate atom of the State, is seized upon by the vital 
force of the State and assimilated into its structure, fitted 
to a place, made to do its service, and entitled in turn to 
receive the service of all the other parts. 

The life-principle of the State is superior to any and all 
atoms of which the State is composed and in which it 
inheres. Time is its field of action, and the human race is 
its material. It sweeps onward, beyond the control of men 
and beyond their understanding. Glimpses of its course 
can be seen by studying the developments of recent years. 
Its mighty movements are revealed only by following that 
course from antiquity. It moves resistlessly upon the gen- 
erations. It is that which inspired the lines : — 

" Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
Yet they grind exceeding small." 

In our age it is slowly raising the oppressed. It is mould- 
ing the forces in human society so that the organism, 
the State itself, shall dominate every atom in it. This 
means that the labor of the State, on the one hand, and the 
wealth, on the other, are to be subordinated to the welfare 
of the common whole. Corporations must be regulated. 
Labor must be directed intelligently. In the development 
of the times, we have come to the breaking down of the old 
system of competition. The old political economy is pass- 
ing away. Combinations, trusts, monopolies, still selfish 
interests seeking their advantage at whatever cost to others, 
strive to dominate the whole people for the enrichment of 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 19 

their treasuries. Organized labor, defiant of the tyranny 
of capital, demands its share of the good things of life. 
Each side is striving for mastery, for prosperity, for ease. 
Each is struggling for selfish gain, not seeking unselfishly 
the perfect development of the State as a whole. Labor 
has justice on its side in its resistance to the selfish indif- 
ference of wealth, and capital will find its self-preservation 
in realizing its true unity with labor. It is a frequent 
plea, and a sound one, that the interests of labor are iden- 
tical with the interests of capital ; but justice requires that 
hereafter the equation be turned the other end around at 
least half the time, and the truth be emphasized that the 
interests of capital are identical with the interests of labor. 
The interests of labor and capital are both wrapped up 
in the normal development of the State, in the promotion 
of that organization which is the distinctive spirit of our 
times. This organization is going on faster now than ever 
before. Never before did the spirit of the times seem to be 
so well equipped and so ready to face the problem of sub- 
ordinating the leaders of capital to their place as servants 
of the body politic. The corporation acts of 1894 were a 
distinct step forward in the solution of this problem, and 
they have a sociological importance which was never hinted 
at by their advocates. The corporations feel this State- 
spirit grappling them. They fear for their future. They 
realize that their existence in the old way is threatened. 
Alarmed, they are trying to defy the State-spirit; they 
would deceive and baffle the people who do not realize 
the bearing of this era in the growth of civilization, who 
do not see how momentous are these times for the whole 
political organism. Capital sees that at last the organic 



20 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

force of mankind is enveloping and assimilating it, and 
that the coming years are portentous of a mighty conflict. 
It is the robber barons contending against the civilized 
forces of the communities which they have hitherto domi- 
nated in their lordly fashion with none strong enough to 
overcome, and many so servile that they aid and abet. 

This is the great political issue of the times, — great 
beyond the significance of any present political party. 
This is the problem which demands the highest quality 
of statesmanship, the most unselfish activity, the most 
energetic and skilful leadership. The leaders of the 
people's cause are few. They are disorganized. They are 
not in good standing, in these days when wealth is the 
great power in politics, and when dress, manners, fashion, 
frivolity, and sensation are the matters of most concern, 
even for the classes who have most to gain by the onward 
march of the organizing spirit of mankind. The contest 
is urgent. We were never so near its solution as now. 
The growing control of corporations, the regulation of rail- 
roads, telegraph companies, gas companies and the like by 
the government, the transaction of lighting business by 
municipalities, the carrying of the mails by the govern- 
ment, the maintenance of schools and highways by the 
State, instead of by private persons, as formerly, — all these 
are significant steps in the organic development which will 
yet, with powerful grasp, compel wealth to serve the people 
without injuring them, and will protect labor while giving 
it its just share, and no more, in the products of its toil. 

This State-spirit is exceedingly active. Every year it 
forces upon the people more business of a public nature 
than they can attend to. Legislative methods are con- 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 21 

stantly improved, but the business gains on the improve- 
ments. The needs of the people, their rational, imperative 
needs in their organic capacity, grow faster than their rep- 
resentatives can attend to them. Biennial sessions of the 
legislature seem ridiculous to any one who has given even 
a superficial thought to the number and quality of matters 
proposed. But, to be up to the times, the legislature should 
have some relation to the business before it, not have been 
elected a year before, when many issues were unknown. If 
ever there was a time for biennials of either sort, it is far in 
the past. The urgent character of present needs demands 
frequent sessions, with legislators elected upon the issues 
to be considered at the time. 

Hence, in the broadest possible view of the State as an 
organic whole, seeing the mighty events of the times and 
their vital importance to the State in all future years, it 
would be the height of folly to refuse attention to the needs 
of the people, to play into the hands of those who hope to 
gain selfishly by obstructing the development of the State, 
and to diminish the activity of the political body by one 
half. Give us annual elections ; let the State-spirit have 
full sway; let the will of the whole people, intelligently 
ruling over all forces in the political organism, subordinate 
each to its place in the body politic, — the servant of the 
whole, and sharer in the prosperity of all. 



IV. 
THE GREEN LEGISLATURE. 

The friends of biennials abandoned, in 1896, their stock 
arguments of previous years, upon which they realized at 
last that it was hopeless to rely to convert the public, and 
put their whole strength, with slight exception, upon two 
alone. The business men said that the State could not 
stand the expense and interruption to business ; but the 
chief reliance was upon the plea that by the biennial sys- 
tem the State would secure better legislation. As this is a 
particularly weak reliance, it may be dismissed briefly by 
pointing out its fallacies. 

One phase of the argument is that in the first session 
of the biennial legislature the members will think over 
matters carefully, sort them out, and put off to the second 
session such as seem to require much deliberation. By 
that time the issues will have become well seasoned in 
their minds, the members will have acquired legislative 
experience, and business will be despatched in better form 
and in shorter time. But if ever there were a theory 
worthy of a practical man's contempt, this is it. Most of 
the business which is presented to the legislature is too 
urgent to wait a year for its transaction. The people are the 
petitioners. They demand that their business be attended 
to speedily. They would surely raise a breeze about the 



THE GREEN LEGISLATURE. 23 

ears of the member who should deliberately postpone their 
concerns to another year, which would bring its full load of 
new business, making it all the more difficult for them to 
secure due attention, — for it is not proposed that the new 
business which is sure to rush in as a flood- into the second 
year of the biennial legislature shall, any of it, be post- 
poned to the first year of the following legislature. Prac- 
tically, the first session of the legislature would be filled 
with satisfying the popular demands. It would be impos- 
sible to make any material gain by postponement. 

But, if the theory were put into practice against the 
wishes of the people, then the scenes which would surely 
present themselves at the second session would demonstrate, 
before the session was one month old, the utter breaking- 
down of the fine theory. Every year brings its new mass 
of urgent and legitimate wants. Any one who has looked, 
even superficially, into the facts, knows that this is the 
truth beyond question, and that the current talk about the 
needless character of the legislation brought to the General 
Court is essentially without foundation. Even in the first 
biennial legislature itself the mischievousness of the two- 
year system would show itself, beyond question, to the 
serious injury of public and private interests. 

But it would be in the first year of the new biennial 
legislature that the great calamity of the change would be _ 
revealed. It would consist of the almost wholly inexperi- 
enced character of the senators and representatives who had 
been elected to do the legislative business of the public. 
Abundant reason to fear this most unfortunate situation is 
found in the political habits of our people. It is very com- 
mon for them to re-elect members from the cities and large 



24 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

towns for two terms. Thus every legislature under the 
annual system contains a material proportion of experienced 
members. They are enough to carry on the movements of 
the two branches while they are in session. They are 
sufficient to supply all of the committees with experienced 
chairmen, besides several more to stand near the head of 
the committee. They know the rules and traditions of the 
House and Senate more or less accurately, and are sufficient 
to take the brunt of the work while the new members are 
becoming familiar with the rules, with the subject-matter 
of legislation, and with each other. In the House of 1896 
were 104 who had been in the House of 1895, while the 
Senate of 1896 had only three members without legis- 
lative experience. In this way the volume of experienced 
men leavens the inexperienced mass. Usually the new men 
are cautious about displaying their lack of familiarity with 
the rules, and the old members guide proceedings, prac- 
tically, far out of their numerical proportion. Under the 
biennial system this proportion of experienced men would 
disappear. Scarcely a new man would be given a second 
term. This is a sound prediction to make, for it is based 
upon the political practices of the people, which are founded 
in human nature, in the ambition of individuals, and in the 
jealousy of municipalities for their share of political rights, 
—jealousies which are stronger than personal ambitions, and 
which are sure to have potent consequences in the election 
of representatives. Under the biennial system it is prob- 
able that men would be elected for a second term even less 
than are now elected for three terms in succession, for a 
re-election would mean four years of consecutive service, 
whereas if the term is only one year, and the people know 



THE GREEN LEGISLATURE. 25 

that the choice will return to their hands again after one 
year, they will be the ' more ready to give a third term to 
a particularly worthy representative. But with a return to 
the people only after two years, they would be more likely 
to refuse so long a second term to a man who had already 
been two years in office. 

That this is a sound judgment is evident from the experi- 
ence of Vermont, for one instance. The Senate consists of 
thirty members and the House of two hundred and thirty- 
three. In Massachusetts the Senate consists of forty and 
the House of two hundred and forty ; so the circumstances 
are nearly parallel. In 1868, the last year in which elec- 
tions occurred in Vermont under the annual system, there 
were re-elected eleven senators and ninety-six representa- 
tives. In 1890, under the biennial system, there were re- 
elected no senators and only four representatives. In 1892 
there were re-elected three senators and fourteen representa- 
tives. In 1894 there were re-elected no senators and only 
nine representatives. 

Such is the proportion of inexperience to experience 
which may reasonably be predicted for Massachusetts under 
the biennial system. 

Does Massachusetts want to commit this costly and 
dangerous mistake ? Not enough members would be re- 
elected tb carry on the proceedings with even a, tolerable 
approach to the present degree of dispatch, which is itself 
criticised, with reason, for lack of system and energy. Not 
nearly enough members would be re-elected to fill the chair- 
manships of committees, to say nothing about the other 
places. Lack of knowledge would be encountered at every 
stage. Where there is now one error in the laws, then 



26 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

there would be ten. Where now lawyers are exasperated 
and courts are perplexed by confused legislation, the exas- 
peration would be multiplied, and the perplexity would 
become more entangling. These errors would not only 
stand forth for the succeeding legislature to correct, though 
it would have so little experience of its own, "and be sinning 
so grievously on its own account, that it could not skilfully 
amend the acts of its predecessors, but the blunders and 
inconsistencies would be cropping out after ten, twenty, 
and fifty years. The entire body of law would be tinctured 
with imperfections inserted at many essential spots. The 
risks to great property interests, the hazards of legal formal- 
ities, the uncertainties about the standing of capital, would 
be many, unknown, and the cause of ceaseless anxiety. 
Truly they would increase the toils of the lawyers and 
multiply the annoyances and expense of the people. One 
single act might cost the State more than the expense of 
State elections for a dozen years. Yet the argument of 
better legislation is that which, weak and limp, has been 
advanced by the biennialists as a substitute for the dis- 
carded pleas for a longer term for the executive and for a 
larger popular vote. 

If anything is certain under the biennial system it is 
this sure deterioration in the quality of the legislature, and 
the consequent damage to the many interests which need 
even better talents than are now at their service. There is 
no approach to equality between the probable loss and the 
supposed gain. It cannot be that Massachusetts will be so 
foolish as to put such a worthless and dangerous system 
into her Constitution. 



V. 

EDUCATION BY FREQUENT EMOTIONS. 

One amazing step was taken in 1896 by the promoters of 
the biennial amendment. The argument from the educa- 
tional value of political discussions, which was the chief 
point of the old-time opponents of biennials, such as Adin 
Thayer and Alanson W. Beard, and has always been 
admitted, to some extent, by the other side, was openly 
disregarded. It was positively affirmed by some of the 
speakers for the amendment, at the hearing, that there is 
no educational value in a political campaign, and this was 
emphasized on the floor of the House by a speaker who 
declared that it was not the function of Massachusetts to 
keep a political kindergarten; that if foreigners came here 
ignorant, it was for them to accommodate themselves to 
the practices of Massachusetts, it was not for Massachusetts 
to change her practices on their account. 

This educational argument is so old and familiar that it 
need be mentioned here only for the purpose of insist- 
ing upon its strength and its high importance. It is an 
argument which does not lose its force with repetition, 
though its opponents may become weary of it. Moreover, it 
applies not only to the foreign voters who come to Massa- 
chusetts, but also, with strong force, to every voter in the 
State. Under our annual system, how many are the times 
when a voter can express himself upon the policy of the 



28 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

State, or say who are the men best fitted to administer her 
affairs ? In the entire course of the average life, from the 
day the voter is twenty-one to the day of his death, how 
many opportunities does he have to vote upon State issues, 
even under our annual system ? How much time is he 
required to give to the State which protects him from the 
cradle through his active career, which furnishes the foun- 
dation upon which he rears his financial fortune, which 
secures the peace under whose fostering protection he rears 
and educates his family, which subordinates the inventions 
and powers of man to the service of man so that he who 
loyally takes his place in this organism gets out of it far 
more than he can possibly give to it ? The opportunities 
are comparatively few. The service is slight. The State 
is great. The consequences of a sound political adminis- 
tration are unspeakable. 

Above one's duty to self or family is his duty to the 
State. In the right discharge of his duty to his fellow- 
man lies the right discharge of his duty to God. The State 
rightfully demands from every voter a trained political 
judgment, a quick perception of what is for her prosperity, 
what is for the establishment of justice for all classes of 
citizens without distinction between the rich and pour, the 
weak and the strong. In the rapidly growing complexity 
of our political organism, we must all give more time to 
politics than in the past. We are bound in duty to be 
faithful politicians, — not politicians interested only in 
petty struggles between the outs and the ins, but devoted 
to the largest prosperity and most substantial growth of the 
political body, scorning petty partisan politics, rising 
above the plane of present political activity of the baser 



EDUCATION BY FREQUENT ELECTIONS. 29 

sort, forcing the buccaneers of politics down to their deserved 
insignificance, and acting at all times upon broad, non- 
partisan lines for the development of the political body. 

Xow, political judgment grows by exercise. Is it rea- 
sonable to suppose that in the line of mental endowments 
here is an exception to the rule which demands exercise 
for the promotion of strength ? It is so clear that it needs 
only attention to make it certain that political faculties, 
like other mental qualities, are promoted by exercise. The 
issues at stake in a political campaign are the most im- 
portant in a man's existence, except those involved in his 
personal relation to his Maker. They demand the utmost 
fund of information, the most thorough knowledge of pub- 
lic men and public events, the ability to discern between 
the true and the false, determination to adhere to the right, 
no matter what man or party calls upon him to subordinate 
his judgment or his conscience, unselfish activity for the 
public good at the expense of his ease or pocket. Once in 
a year is none too often for giving large attention to public 
concerns. Once in a year is none too often to exercise the 
freeman's right and prerogative of passing judgment upon 
the men and measures of the times. It is the exercise of 
the power which makes it effective. Anything short of the 
actual vote is likely to leave the problem as a mere theoret- 
ical discussion to the determination of which the mind is 
not forced. There would be no responsibility of action, 
hence there would be no obligation to think and study. By 
frequent action the political judgment becomes clear and 
decisive. It has confidence in itself. It discriminates 
by its action far more than it would in a mere theoretical 
discussion between the true and the false. 



30 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

On the other hand, disuse of mind, like disuse of 
muscles, tends to liabbiness and inefficiency. The dis- 
crimination between the real issues of the election would 
not be as keen, whether the voter be a recent immigrant or 
a native of the soil. There would be less familiarity with 
the essence of the issue before the people. There would be 
far more liability to become confused by the assertions of 
political pleaders and more liability to yield to the appeals 
of party managers. Both judgment and will would become 
enfeebled, and the public and the individual would both 
suffer in consequence. There is no possible escape from 
these consequences under biennials, for the laws of mind 
are as rigorous and as persistent as the laws of matter, and 
the judgment which is not specialized cannot deal rightly 
with a specialty. Politics is destined to become more of 
a speciality with us than in the past. The development 
of the political organism demands more thought from the 
average voter. It is yearly becoming more perilous to the 
State for the people to neglect their political functions and 
to fail to specialize their political judgment. More ques- 
tions than ever before are pressing for solution. It is cul- 
pable for the citizen to neglect the demands of the State 
for the sake of avoiding the trouble of voting, or the slight 
expense of an election. Oh, the folly of the plea that is 
made for less frequent attention to political affairs! How 
it betrays the present neglect on the part of those who 
make it, and the need that they give more attention to the 
affairs of the State ! 

But the foreign element of our population is large enough 
to demand consideration, apart from these reasons which 
apply to the entire population. It is a narrow view which 



EDUCATION BY FREQUENT ELECTIONS. 31 

looks upon the State as so much aloof from mankind that 
she need pay no attention to the political condition of those 
who come to her shores. In the sublime mission of the 
American republic for the elevation of mankind, the poor 
and oppressed from all lands are sure to arrive within our 
borders. With the spirit of Christianity and with supreme 
confidence in the stability of our democratic institutions 
we welcome them. But we recognize that they have not 
had such a past as those who have inherited by birth the 
prizes of the Anglo-Saxon struggle for liberty, and have 
not been reared amid the influences of Plymouth Rock and 
Bunker Hill. For the elevation of humanity and for the 
promotion of the prosperity of our own people, we have 
decided that the suffrage shall be granted under certain 
qualifications. We believe that it is for the good of the 
voter, as well as for the good of the State, that this standard 
be established. When the foreigner is able to comply with 
our qualifications, then he is entitled to the suffrage under 
our laws. But much of that foreign vote is inexpert, un- 
trained in Massachusetts politics, unfamiliar with our past, 
incompetent to form a correct conception at once of our 
political issues. Personal discussion enlightens this foreign 
vote quickly. Tt has a force and directness which cannot 
be gained by newspaper articles. It appeals to men who 
cannot for themselves estimate the relative bearing of 
forces. Though the complications of partisan politics enter 
into the campaigns to confuse and warp the argument, yet 
the necessity of so fair a discussion that the main facts can- 
not be successfully denied is upon the party speakers. The 
voters are stimulated as they never would be by reading. 
They think and balance contradictory pleadings as they 



32 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

would not over an impersonal article. Their judgment is 
quickened as it would not be by infrequent appeals. There 
is developed a spirit of watchfulness over public officials, a 
disposition to hold them to a strict personal account, a 
sense of the direct interest which each voter has in efficient 
and honest government, which holds from year to year, and 
goes to develop a soundness of political judgment which 
would be lost if the elections came only once in two years. 

The force of this view is increased by the consideration 
that there is so large a foreign element in Massachusetts. 
Boston is more than half composed of those of foreign birth 
or of foreign ancestry in the last generation. This propor- 
tion is approximated in other cities, and there is a large 
infusion of the foreign element all over the State. These 
people are here to stay. They are to be assimilated. They 
are to be moulded over by the spirit of Massachusetts insti- 
tutions. They are to be filled with loyalty to Massachusetts 
interests. By as much as they are not familiar with our 
institutions, by as much as their habits of thought are slow, 
by as much as their political faculties have not been devel- 
oped in the countries whence they have come, by so much 
the more do they need that training of political judgment 
which comes only by attention to public affairs and by an 
expression of their personal opinion in the act of voting. 

In contrast with this the biennialists set a denial of the 
efficiency of a campaign as a political educator, and urge 
that we have too much politics, and that it costs too much. 
Was ever so feeble and untrue a pretence set up against 
an imperative political duty, and a policy of the highest 
political importance ? 



VI. 

STATE ISSUES IGNORED. 

Oues is a government by the people. The sum of all 
the available intelligence in the State, enforced by all the 
power in the will of all the people united, is the directing 
energy in our State development. But, even then, were all 
possible human intelligence enforced by the most vigorous 
united will, at the service of the State, it would be insuffi- 
cient to meet the demands upon it for the solution of the 
problems of the organic development of humanity, and for 
carrying into successful execution the plans of action which 
the sum of all the intelligence should foresee to be best. 
The ideal condition would be that in which the intelli- 
gence of all the people would be available for every problem 
which might require the attention of all the people. 

But the immense practical difficulties in the way of 
attaining this ideal prevent now, and doubtless will pre- 
vent, for an incalculable future, a decision of the people 
upon every concern within the province of the State as a 
whole. Government must be by representatives of the 
people, — by a few men giving their thought to State ques- 
tions, and embodying the will of the people as far as prac- 
ticable, carrying out the instructions of the people upon the 
comparatively few matters upon which instructions can be 
given in political campaigns, and relying upon their polit- 

3 



34 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

ical judgment and honesty for the solution of those ques- 
tions upon which they do not have the instructions of the 
people. 

Now it is a truth which no one familiar with the busi- 
ness which the people bring to the State House will for a 
moment deny, that there is a vast mass of new and neces- 
sary matters brought in every year. The legislation of 
each session is essentially different from that of any other. 
Upon the most important of these matters there has prob- 
ably been some expression of popular opinion. It is the 
testimony of the leading agitator for biennials that the 
interest in local elections for members of the legislature 
adds, perceptibly, to the total of the vote in the off years. 
Here is a point upon which both sides will agree, that there 
is an interest in legislative issues apart from that in the 
State ticket which is of perceptible influence in the total 
result. On this account the elections should be frequent 
enough to permit the intelligence and will of the people 
in the several representative districts to have an adequate 
expression. But the constancy of change in the issues 
which are before the people is itself a demonstration that 
once in a year is none too often for an opportunity to vote 
upon the election of a representative in the legislature. 
Here is a simple question of fact which can be determined 
by any one by a study of the twelve hundred to thirteen 
hundred separate matters which come before the legisla- 
ture annually, by distributing them among the several 
representative districts where they originated, and seeing 
how necessary they are to the prosperity of the people. • 
But, in addition to the local interests, which in them- 
selves are sufficient to demand an annual election of repre- 



STATE ISSUES IGNORED. 35 

sentatives to the legislature, there are the broader and 
greater interests of the State as a whole. These are, at 
this particular epoch in our development, of surpassing 
moment. The combination and consolidation of corpora- 
tions on the one hand, and the organization and efficiency 
of labor interests on the other, the growing, imperative 
nature of the question for the State to solve, whether its 
people shall rule over the immense power of selfish wealth 
or be ruled by it, the increasing multiplicity of inventions, 
changing the possibilities of business and overthrowing 
conservative practices, the enlarging scope of reformatory 
and charitable work, — these, and a thousand other avenues 
of State activity, tell the entire people in mandatory tones 
that public interests are too numerous, too prodigious, and 
too vital to be neglected for any urgency of private business 
or for the indulgence of any desire for recreation. Our 
times are more sober and momentous than those of any 
previous epoch. It would be folly to neglect these issues. 

If any student of this biennial problem will look over 
the platforms of the two great parties for the last ten years 
in Massachusetts, he will find that national issues have 
largely overshadowed those of State concern only. Not 
only has this been the fact in the presidential and congres- 
sional years, but in the off years, when only State officials 
and members of the legislature were to be elected, State 
issues have been subordinate to national. This illustrates 
how prone political managers are to pull on the strings 
which they think most certain to bring in the votes, no 
matter whether the issues presented are the most pertinent. 
Partisanship is deliberately brought into play to the sacri- 
fice of State concerns. Now, put with this truth the truth 



36 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

in our opening sentences, that the progress of the State is 
to be made by getting the opinion of the people as sepa- 
rately as possible and as intelligently as possible upon 
the several issues which are before them. Separate ver- 
dicts of the people, according to the questions before them, 
are the chief desideratum in an election. In each case the 
fullest opportunity ought to be given for the triumph of the 
merits of the case, unobscured by any trading for votes, by 
any log-rolling, by any confounding of issues, or by any 
appeals to partisan prejudice or passion. It is essential for 
the progress of the State that it have the benefit of the 
intelligence of its citizens to the largest possible extent. 
Anything which cripples this expression of the popular 
intelligence, anything which gives the people less oppor- 
tunity to pass upon the merits of each issue separately, any- 
thing which makes it impossible for them to express their 
honest judgment, is just so much of a hindrance to the 
development of the State. It is just so much of a delay 
in the introduction of better methods of administration, so 
much of a prop to unworthy partisanship, so much of an 
obstacle in the attainment of justice between men, so much 
of a hindrance to the upward progress of the weaker and 
unjustly treated classes in the State. Hence it is a most 
serious concern that a change in the Constitution is pro- 
posed which will forever put State issues in the rear, which 
will obscure them with national concerns, which will make 
it totally impossible from this time on ever to procure an 
intelligent judgment of the people upon State issues alone. 
And this, too, at the very time when it is more essential 
than ever before in the history of the State that there 
should be particular attention paid to State matters. 



STATE ISSUES IGNORED. 37 

As far as the mass of the voters are concerned, they will 
vote the one party ticket or the other. It is true that there 
is considerable independent voting. It is true that there is 
enough of it in Massachusetts to furnish exceptions to the 
rule of party success. But the general truth is that voters 
take either one party ticket or the other. The split tickets 
are numerically few compared with the straight ones. Now 
consider, in the light of this fact, where this biennial prop- 
osition leaves the State. At every election national and 
State issues would be pending. The object of the election 
is to get the intelligence of the people, as a whole, upon 
the course pursued in national and State politics. At this 
epoch we have pending the issues of the tariff, the currency, 
the foreign policy of the government, the efficiency of the 
internal administration. At all times the pending issues 
will be further complicated by issues personal to the candi- 
dates, — their ability to administer the national affairs and 
their character as men of purity and integrity. Upon all 
these different points the verdict of the people is supposed 
to be registered by the election. But these several distinct 
national questions are to be further complicated by matters 
of great moment in our State administration. How shall 
the corporations be made subservient to the good of the 
people ; what shall be the relation of the executive to the 
heads of departments ; what of the existence and functions 
of the executive council; what about the responsibility of 
the departments and commissions ; what of the tendency 
of the times for the State to enter more than ever into the 
daily living of the people in a business sense ; what of the 
public school policy ; what of the proposed solicitor-general 
for the people to defend their interests as their special 



38 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

representative ; what of the development of our metropolitan 
systems which are beginning to show their heads not only 
in Boston, but also in Worcester and Springfield, and will 
appear at every point where the density of population sug- 
gests a consolidation of municipalities rather than further 
subdivision ; what of the suffrage and its extension and 
regulation ; what of the rescue of the legislature from the 
few, and making it subservient to the many by having its 
presiding officers elected by the people at large ; what of 
our textile, normal, and manual training schools; what of 
many other questions which are now, or soon will be at 
stake in our State campaigns ? Yet, under the proposed 
biennial system, the verdict of the voter upon these many 
questions of national administration and character, plus 
many more State issues of development, as well as the 
character and capacity of the State candidates, would be 
expressed by one " X " on the Australian ballot. All these 
matters are to be lumped together, and the voter must say 
yes or no to the entire lot, and that is to be interpreted 
as his opinion on each. Our present system is confused 
enough, but this would be tenfold worse. If ever a scheme 
were concocted in a lunatic asylum it would seem as if this 
must be the one. It would be impossible to believe that 
intelligent citizens could be so blind were not the foolish 
and perilous proposition actually pending before the people 
for their verdict. It is a most fitting time to recall the 
prayer on our governors' proclamations : " God save the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. " 



VII. 
THE BUSINESS MEN. 

In the presentation to the legislature, and particularly to 
the committee on constitutional amendments, of the case 
for biennial elections, much emphasis was placed upon the 
position of the business men. They demand biennials. 
Their representatives were present in force from all parts of 
the State, from the leading interests in the realms of indus- 
try and commerce, and they were a unit in their opinion 
that it would be for the good of the State to have elections 
only once in two years. Officers and members of the State 
Board of Trade, representatives of local boards of trade, 
each present by vote of his board, — all combined to impress 
upon the committee the unanimous request of the business 
men of Massachusetts. Cottons and woolens, hides and 
leather, paints and oils, crockery and glassware raised their 
harmonious voice for biennial elections. 

They assumed to speak for Massachusetts, for Massachu- 
setts is a great business State. Their claims are admitted 
in many quarters in this degenerate age of the worship 
of the business man, and it has been assumed by many, 
apparently, that what they say must be sound political 
doctrine. They want biennial elections because annual 
elections disturb business, because the expense is more than 
the business interests of the State can endure, because the 



40 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

thoughts of the people are taken up too much with politics 
when they ought to be devoted to business affairs. In the 
minds of these petitioners, the interests of the State are 
wholly bound up in business, and whatever " business " 
demands should be granted. 

But the people at large, who have the right and the duty 
to pass upon this " business " argument, will not fail to 
observe that not one solitary man of all the business repre- 
sentatives, from cotton to glassware, gave a hint of a fact, 
in any degree, to show that annual State elections injure 
business. If they had said that the interference of Congress 
with the currency, and the tariff, and internal revenue had 
an effect upon business, they would have made a plausible 
case. But not one word was said, and if it could have 
been said, surely it would have been, to show that the con- 
dition of business is affected either by State legislation, or 
by the campaigns of the off years, when national issues are 
pending only indirectly. If the loss to business is so 
serious that the practice of the State for one hundred and 
fifteen years must be overturned, and the many advantages 
of frequent elections are to be sacrificed, surely there must 
be some financial statement approximately adequate to the 
case. Let the business men show how much they suffer 
from national campaigns. Let them separate the losses 
from national and State causes, so that the people can have 
some idea of their relative amounts. The business men 
are familiar with figures. They are accustomed to tracing 
effects from causes in the financial world. Their minds 
are keener than the average citizen's in analyzing the many 
factors which enter into the market value of a product. 
Let them put their unsupported and improbable assertions 



THE BUSINESS MEN. 41 

into the language of their own trade, so that they may have 
a clear idea of what they are telling the public, and so that 
the public may know how many dollars of money are to be 
offset, in this great contest, against the rights and liberties 
of the people and the responsibility of legislators to their 
constituents. 

While they are preparing the figures which they forgot 
to give, it is pertinent to analyze their testimony. It 
reveals so discreditable an attitude among the business men 
that it is only the truth to say, considering the vital rela- 
tion of these leaders in trade to the body politic, considering 
the corrupt and degenerate elements in city governments, 
considering the decline in the legislature, and considering 
the growing power of wealth in politics, that the appear- 
ance and arguments of these representative business men 
before the committee on constitutional amendments was 
the most disgraceful sight which has been seen at the State 
House in this generation. 

Not one man of them showed familiarity with political 
affairs. Not one of them expressed a thought for the good 
of the State as a whole, except as it was related to business 
in the money-making sense. Not one showed any concep- 
tion of the State as a great organic body, with its needs, as 
a whole, involving the welfare of every citizen. Not one 
recognized any other interest than his own narrow circle 
of money-making. Each one, with his eagle eye sharply 
fixed on the almighty dollar, regarded that time lost which 
was taken from " business " in order that citizens might 
become better informed regarding their political rights and 
duties,- and better skilled in right political practices. From 
beginning to end, their testimony was narrow, selfish, 



42 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

absorbed in themselves as the gods who rule the State, 
thoughtless of other interests and ignorant of the elements 
of political knowledge. Such a spectacle was never before 
witnessed under the dome, and such is the wisdom which 
is appealed to as the only guide for the most highly 
organized political body in the land! 

This spectacle of the business men is so vital to this 
case, and is so pertinent to political evils of the times, that 
it ought to be examined further. It is a phase of the with- 
drawal from politics of the leading men in city and State. 
Its complement is the presence in the chairs of councilmen, 
aldermen, and legislators, which the business men have 
abandoned in their selfish pursuit of money, of inferior, 
unprincipled men, who corrupt the halls of legislation and 
bring scandal upon the legislatures of cities and States. 
One phase of their folly is the present condition of the 
United States Senate, tainted with men who have made 
their fortunes, and have, with them, bought their way into 
the highest representative seats in the nation. The dis- 
credit which now attaches in the popular mind to the 
United States Senate would not exist if the highest ability 
in the country were unselfishly at the country's service, 
trained to exalted position by experience in the common 
councils and aldermanic boards of our cities, and in the 
assemblies and senates of our legislatures. 

These business men who appeared for biennials are repre- 
sentatives of a large class who are guilty of neglecting 
political affairs. Boston itself demonstrates their selfish 
withdrawal from politics, and their surrender to men who 
have less opportunity than they to train themselves for 
public service. A part of the evidence of the petitioners 



THE BUSINESS MEN. 43 

at the hearing in 1896, to show the indifference of the 
people to politics in the off years, was that, at the city 
election in Boston, in 1895, the ward which contains more 
solid business men than any other part of the State cast 
only sixty-four per cent, of the assessed vote, and that at 
the caucus to nominate republican candidates only eighty- 
seven men were present, or about four per cent, of the 
assessed vote, and about seven per cent, of the party vote. 

In the State election of 1895, the percentage of vote cast 
to the registered vote was as follows in the wards of Boston : 
Ward 1, . 765 ; Ward 2, . 768 ; Ward 3, . 763 ; Ward 4, . 812 ; 
Ward 5, . 777 ; Ward 6, . 877 ; Ward 7, . 819 ; Ward 8, . 840 ; 
Ward 9, .747; Ward 10, .832; Ward 11, .726; Ward 12, 
.809; Ward 13, .781; Ward 14, .795; Ward 15, .809; 
Ward 16, .823; Ward 17, .817; Ward 18, .803; Ward 
19, .771; Ward 20, .829; Ward 21, .782; Ward 22, .791; 
Ward 23, .782; Ward 24, .767; Ward 25, .835; average 
for the whole city, .791. Now here is a variation from .726 
per cent, to . 877, and this difference of fifteen per cent, is 
between the aristocratic Back Bay and the democratic North 
End, — the foreign population in the latter being very large. 
The general truth runs through the entire list that it is the 
rich wards which show the smallest per cent., and the poor 
ones where the people prove their greater interest in polit- 
ical contests. It is the people who neglect their public 
duties, comparatively, who are the backbone of the bien- 
nial strength, and those who attend to them who are the 
mass of the opposition, and the division comes near to run- 
ning on class lines, to the shame of the petitioners. 

This guilt and folly of our business men is vital. Unless 
it is overcome by a regeneration of unselfish devotion to 



44 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

the public good, the corruption of wealth, the exactions 
of monopolies and trusts, the oppression of the working 
classes, and the bribing of even our colleges by moneyed 
capitalists, will continue. Many efforts at municipal reform 
are proposed by philanthropists who are mistakenly apply- 
ing remedies at the wrong place. If these leading business 
men, honest and capable as they are, were at the desks of 
common councilmen and aldermen, with a vote and a ,legal 
constituency at their back, there would be no agitation for 
municipal cabinets, or single legislative chambers, or bien- 
nial terms, or other nostrums for serious political evils. 
Under our democratic system, under every right democracy, 
one man is as truly a political unit as another as long 
as he is out of jail, and no matter how ingenious be the 
machine constructed by the philanthropists and reformers 
to keep the rascals out of office and to give the saints the 
snug and quiet management of political affairs, sooner or 
later the rascals will surely get hold of that machine, and 
its efficiency will return to plague its inventors. The con- 
stant, unselfish interest of the leading men in the details 
of local politics is all that can prevent this unfortunate 
result. 

A demonstration of the power of the people when they 
are aroused has been seen in New York. When they 
wanted to turn out Tammany, they did it. That very act 
was a complete proof that all the corruption which pTO- 
voked it was made possible only by the neglect of the very 
men who dethroned it. Had they done their simple and 
plain political duty at every city election, there would 
have been no such abomination of iniquity as made New 
York a byword and shame to popular government. 



THE BUSINESS MEN. 45 

So it is in every city. Every one can have good govern- 
ment if it really wants it. If it does not have it, the fault 
rests upon the leading men, who are so absorbed in business 
that they abandon politics to the rascals, and then expect 
that the government will be pure. Corruption in municipal 
and State affairs, degeneracy in city councils and legisla- 
tures, of which the public complain, inefficiency which 
rolls up debts and accomplishes little, are chargeable, 
rightly, to the business men, who, with power to prevent 
these evils, who would prevent them if they only did their 
simple political duty, permit them to thrive unchecked. 
To continue this wickedness on the part of business men is 
to permit, as was permitted in New York, utter perversion 
of justice in the courts, the moral rottenness of the police 
force, the social corruption due to flaunting vileness, the 
extortion and extravagance of incompetent and infamous 
politicians, and the general demoralization of the political 
body. 

No more accurate and condensed statement of the creed 
of business men can probably be found than that in a recent 
public utterance of a business representative of the biennial 
side of the problem. He said : " The chief purpose of the 
government is to keep the peace and enable our people to 
attend to their private affairs. " This view is doubtless 
held by many who have thought little about the recent 
wonderful developments in our legislature. It is the creed 
of the old school, who hold that to be the best government 
which governs least. It is a part of an outgrown political 
philosophy which cannot stand for a moment under the test 
of recent progress, and is shown to be wholly false when 
set in the light of the great truth that the State is a grow- 



46 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

ing organism, in which the health and prosperity of each 
part is rightfully the concern of all. 

But the business men, withdrawing from politics because 
it interferes with the pursuit of wealth, their political 
senses blunted by lack of training in public matters, 
indifferent to the needs of the political body, provided they 
enjoy their luxury and ostentation, practise this doc- 
trine, that " the chief purpose of the government is to keep 
the peace and enable our people to attend to their private 
affairs, " reckless of the consequences to those who are less 
equipped for the struggle for a competence, or who are more 
unselfish in their devotion to the public good. 

These men cry for biennial elections. They want bien- 
nial legislative sessions, unmindful of the calamities to the 
mass of the people which would follow the application of 
the business men's creed. Suppose the people grant their 
demands. Let there be no advanced legislation, and let 
the judgment and conscience of business men determine 
what is best. Let corporations be released from salutary 
regulations to compel them to be subservient to the public 
good as well as to stockholders' pockets. Let savings 
banks invest the hard-earned gains of poor depositors in 
whatever hazard they please, free from State law or State 
supervision. Let beef-fat and cotton-seed oil be sold for 
butter to the making of fortunes for thrifty swindlers. Let 
endowment orders, tolerated freely by law, cheat poor 
clerks and ignorant domestics out of all their savings to 
the enrichment of men, some of whom are now in prison. 
Let Mrs. Howe's women's banks open for business in every 
city, paying interest to credulous depositors out of new 
deposits till all are involved in the final catastrophe. Let 



THE BUSINESS MEN. 47 

strikes and lockouts waste the money and energies of 
employers and employees with no Board of Arbitration to 
invoke the reign of reason and peace. Let sweat-shops 
inflict wretchedness upon their occupants and carry foul 
disease into the homes of their patrons. Let gas companies 
compete in ruinous rivalry till the public is forced to pay 
the cost into the hands of a monopolist combination. Let 
fraud rule at the ballot-box where no Australian system 
is known. Let long hours and bad ventilation sap the 
strength and shorten the lives of thousands of employees. 
Let cholera spread, unrestrained by State regulation, and 
let tuberculosis, ravaging the herds of the farmers, infect 
unsuspecting human victims with deadly disease. Let 
typhoid fever poison the sources of water-supply with no 
investigation by the State Board of Health. Let employers 
discharge their workmen if they belong to a labor union. 
Let shop-girls be compelled by cruel employers to stand for 
hours, without once sitting, exhausting their frames, and 
permanently unfitting them for motherhood. Let there be 
no employer's liability law to compel justice to be done by 
reckless corporations to those who have been deprived of 
support and have been bereaved of husband and father by 
their deliberate neglect. Let switchmen's feet be cut off 
when they are caught in unprotected frogs or switches. 
Let whirling machinery, unchecked, dash out the brains 
and tear asunder the bodies of entangled unfortunates. Let 
railroad companies, uncompelled by the State to heat their 
passenger cars by steam, return to the deadly car stove, 
roasting men and women alive in the wrecks of overturned 
trains. Let safety couplers be abolished, and the annual 
slaughter of hapless brakemen go ruthlessly on. In short, 



48 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

wipe out all these recent gains to the State, and return to 
the good old times, and to 

The simple plan 
That they should take who have the power 
And they should keep who can. 

Let the unscientific fall victims to nature's contagions and 
pestilences. Let ignorant thousands, outwitted and de- 
frauded, become the helpless prey of educated knaves. Let 
the weak be robbed by the strong. Let orphans plead, and 
widows weep, and corpses rot in the path of negligent 
employers, but don't disturb the business men in their 
pious worship of the money god, because, " the chief pur- 
pose of government is to keep the peace and enable our 
people to attend to their private affairs." 

Oh, the shame of it! Oh, that such ignorance of true 
politics can audaciously pose as statesmanship, and such 
selfish indifference can presumptuously assume to be alone 
the custodian of the prosperity of the Commonwealth ! 

Yet this is the era of the worship of the business man : 
his star is in the ascendant, and " what he says goes. " 

But why should the public tacitly admit that the busi- 
ness man's judgment is the final criterion of public needs, 
and unquestioningly assume that what he wants is identical 
with the people's welfare. The situation in Massachusetts 
reveals his ignorance of political principles and his indif- 
ference to political duties. Is his personal integrity so firm 
and spotless that it may be safely trusted by the public ? 
Marshall Field, of Chicago, asserts that the standard of 
business morality is perceptibly lower than it was five 
years ago, and is steadily sinking, outside of that city as 



THE BUSINESS MEN. 49 

well as in it, and other leading Chicago merchants agree 
with him, and a prominent newspaper advocate x of biennials 
in Massachusetts agrees that the charge is true. It adds 
that under the present system of business competition " the 
morals of business cannot well be improving. " Shall Massa- 
chusetts submit to be ruled by a class tainted by " trickery 
and dishonesty, and ... a general lowering of moral 
standards in business ? " Shall not the mass of the people 
rather, regardless of party, throw off this unworthy dom- 
ination of men who neither understand politics, nor care 
for political concerns, nor have clean hands themselves, and 
assert their own will in the management of their public, 
but not partisan affairs, subordinating rich and poor alike 
to the good of the State, and approaching the high ideal of 
a perfect political organism ? 

The case of the business man must not be dismissed 
without making a point which is of itself sufficient reason 
for rejecting the biennial resolve. If elections came only 
once in two years the business men, and all others also, 
would give less thought to politics than ever. Present 
evils in city and State governments, due to political igno- 
rance and to the abdication by the business men of their 
rights and duties into the hands of the unprincipled politi- 
cians, would be intensified. Public affairs would not be up 
for discussion. Public officials could not be reached by the 
people. The political faculties and judgment of the masses 
would become weakened and blunted by disuse. When they 
came to be exercised they would be less valid for the right 
settlement of popular issues, and, as reason lost her place, 
passion, prejudice, and partisanship would usurp it. The 
Commonwealth would suffer great detriment. The political 

4 



50 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

boss would thrive. The political heeler would be in clover, 
and the voter of independent thought and high patriotic 
purpose would be in contempt. Nothing but evil would 
come to the public from biennial elections, and the return 
path would be trod only with deep pain and humiliation, 
with no certainty that the priceless benefits of annual 
elections would ever again be enjoyed. 



VIII. 
LABOK'S VITAL INTEREST. 

Feequent among the sneers at the cause of annual elec- 
tions is that against the interests of labor. In different 
quarters, with sharp quip or elaborate tirade, or plausible 
affirmation, it is repeatedly asserted that the real interests 
of the laboring people are on the side of biennial elections, 
that the workers are led astray by a few walking delegates 
who only " work with their mouths, " and whose occupation 
would be gone if they should lose their opportunity for con- 
stant agitation. Eidicule and argument are tried alike to 
convince the -laboring people that their concerns would be 
promoted by less frequent elections. But this is all a 
device of the enemy, or, in case of an honest assertion, is 
only the erroneous opinion of one who cannot possibly have 
given fair attention to the matter. 

The laboring men are not mistaken in their desperate 
clinging to frequent elections as the great source of their 
improvement. They may not have studied the case in all 
its bearings, but their judgment and their instincts are 
right when they refuse to take the advice of those who 
would deprive them of more than half of their political 
power, and would tie their hands and leave them dependent 
for their progress upon the pleasure of those who will give 
them a share in the surplus of good things only after they 



52 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

have themselves taken what they want. No more vividf 
demonstration of the advance of labor under the system of 
annual elections, and of the close dependence of that 
advance upon the frequency of the elections, can be found 
than in the summary of recent labor legislation in Massa- 
chusetts. For the last few years we find the following list 
of acts specially for the benefit of " labor. " 

In 1888 — the act to regulate the character of deposits in 
savings banks to the end that the banks should not be used 
by the rich as a means of safe investment for large sums and 
be thereby perverted from their primary purpose for the bene- 
fit of the laboring people ; the act to provide for the incor- 
poration of labor or trade organizations ; the act to amend the 
employers' liability law for the further benefit of the injured 
person ; the amendment of the act to pension members of the 
Boston fire department ; the act to make it impossible to 
compel women and children to ride in smoking cars ; the act 
for the more humane treatment of women detained at police 
stations ; the act to punish the sending of women or girls to 
disreputable houses ; the act to limit the employment of chil- 
dren under thirteen years of age in factories and stores ; the 
act to limit the number of persons employed in prison labor ; 
and the act to provide better egress from workshops and public 
buildings in case of fires. 

In 1889 — the act to permit the building of cheap homes 
for the poor by a chartered organization ; further regulation 
of the employment of children ; and the act to regulate the 
attendance of children upon the public schools so as to prevent 
their being kept from school for the sake of work. 

In 1890 — the act to permit minors who cannot read and 
write in the English language, whose labor is necessary for 
the support of themselves or of their families, to be excused 
from attendance at regular public school exercises, provided 
they attend an evening school ; the act to require reports to 



LABOR'S VITAL INTEREST. 53 

be made of accidents in factories and stores ; the act to com- 
pel communication to be made in factories between the engine- 
room and rooms where operatives are at work in order that 
the machinery may be stopped promptly in case of serious 
accident to the workers (this act was the result of several 
deaths where operatives w T ere torn horribly by machinery 
before it could be stopped^ ; the act to punish by a fine of 
from $20 to $ 50 any one who should compel women and 
minors to work in factories between ten at night and six in 
the morning; the act to compel the delivery of schooling 
certificates on demand ; the act to make nine hours a day's 
work for employees of the State, cities, or towns ; the act to 
raise from twenty to thirty weeks the required attendance 
upon the public schools ; and the act to improve the arbi- 
tration act. 

In 1891 — the act to forbid the punishment of weavers by 
fines for imperfect weaving ; the act to strengthen the weekly 
payments law ; the act to permit the polls to be open at six 
o'clock on the morning of election day for the election of 
State and city officers ; the act to prohibit the employment 
of minors who cannot read the English language, in order 
that an ignorant class shall not continue to exist in the State ; 
the act to make nine hours a day's work for county employees ; 
the act to break up the unhealthy and oppressive practices of 
"sweat-shops"; the act to raise to fifteen years the compul- 
sory school age in cities and towns where opportunity is 
given for industrial education ; and the act to extend the 
opportunities for naturalization so that poor men who have 
not the money to travel far need not be disfranchised because 
of such inability when able to pass the required tests. 

In 1892 — the act to provide a form of complaint for vio- 
lation of the laws to regulate the employment of women and 
minors in manufacturing establishments; the act to permit 
the recovery of damages under the employers' liability law 
when there was conscious suffering before the death of the 
injured person ; the act to strengthen the law against sweat- 



54 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

shops ; the act to impose a penalty for the political intimi- 
dation of laborers ; the 58-hour law for factories ; and the 
act to improve the law against fines for imperfect weaving. 

In 1893 — the act to reduce still further the degradation 
and suffering under the sweat-shop system ; the act to extend 
the employers' liability law to another class of cases ; the act 
to make ten hours in a consecutive twelve, a day's work for 
the employees of street railway corporations ; the act to make 
nine hours a legal day's work for all persons doing manual 
labor under any contract in behalf of the State. 

In 1894 — the act to save the lives of switchmen by com- 
pelling all railroads to put blocks of wood into their frogs and 
switches ; the act to establish the commission on the unem- 
ployed ; the act to regulate the keeping of lodging houses in 
Boston so that persons with small means should be no more 
liable to be searched than guests at large hotels ; the act to 
extend the scope of the act to prevent the intimidation of 
laborers ; the act to compel the attendance of children at 
school more regularly ; the act to extend the employers' 
liability act still further ; the codification of the laws to pre- 
vent the discharge of laborers without notice; and the act 
to compel specifications of their work to be furnished to all 
weavers in cotton factories. 

In 1895 — the act to prevent still more effectively the dis- 
charge of laborers ; the law to require specifications to be 
furnished to persons employed in cotton, woolen and worsted 
factories ; the act to require safety appliances to be attached 
to locomotives and cars ; the act to make still more effective 
the lobby law, besides the law for the establishment of textile 
schools, which was for the mutual benefit of labor and capital. 

Here is a long list in recent years. Not one of these acts 
originated with the employers of labor. After all that can 
be said truthfully regarding the desire of employers for the 
good of their employees, it remains the cold fact to the 



LABOR'S VITAL INTEREST. 55 

working men that their empolyers never bestir themselves 
to see that their position before the law is improved. 
Single-handed they have had to fight their way along the 
path of progress. Nor let it be for a moment imagined 
that these issues for which the laboring people are strug- 
gling are of small consequence. These acts mean to the 
laborers better returns for their time and strength, a larger 
share in the good things of life, the means of commanding 
lower prices for their groceries and clothing, their enjoy- 
ment of more leisure, in which they can improve mind 
and morals, better means for promoting physical health, 
better education for their children, better provision for 
widow and orphan in case of death by accident, better 
advantages in the struggle of life all along the line. It 
has been possible to secure these benefits only by constant 
agitation. The employers will not agitate for them ; they 
must do this work for themselves. Their advance has been 
secured in all the great acts for their benefit only after 
repeated defeat, for year after year. But the momentum 
their cause has gained has finally carried them to success. 
This momentum, this advantage from work already done, 
would be largely lost under a system of biennial elections. 

That this would be so is strikingly shown by an argu- 
ment by Governor Brackett in favor of biennials, which 
was read at the hearing in 1896. He argues for biennial 
elections and for annual legislative sessions, just as is con- 
templated by the amendment of 1895 and 1896, and says: 
" The members would be disposed to postpone to the second 
session propositions of questionable expediency coming 
before them at the first, in order that they might have 
ample time for their consideration. On the other hand, at 



56 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

the second session they would not be inclined, except in 
special exigencies, to enter again upon the consideration of 
questions which had been finally disposed of at the first. " 

This is a true statement. But it means nothing less 
than this: that every labor measure which was defeated at 
the first session of a biennial legislature would be defeated 
at the second. Struggle as they might, the laboring men 
would be helpless. The legislature would have passed its 
verdict once upon their petition, and in the second year 
their work would fall to the ground fruitless. Now they 
have the benefit of annual agitation. New men come to 
the legislature every year. The ground they gained in the 
first year may be held in part in the second, while from the 
basis of their old friends re-elected and their persistency 
they may win enough new ones to make a majority. In 
this way they have made their progress in the past. Year 
after year they were defeated on the employers' liability 
bill. The corporations used their power to the utmost to 
defeat them. But with renewed vigor they returned to 
their cause. Finally they were successful, and after they 
had once established the principle of their act they went 
on to increase its scope and efficiency. Just so it has been 
with the ten-hour law, the weekly payments law, and 
many other laws which have been of unspeakable advan- 
tage to them in their hard struggle for the good things of 
life. Doubtless it is because the corporations see that it 
will weaken the force of the labor agitation that they are 
so unanimous in favor of biennials. Corporation power 
has been used freely in the past against labor legislation. 
The biennial contest, in a large and true sense, is only 
a phase of the labor problem. Working men have been 



LABOK'S VITAL INTEREST 57 

threatened with discharge if they testified at the labor 
hearings. Witnesses have refused to tell what they knew 
for fear of being blacklisted. A workman who asked per- 
mission of his employer to attend the hearing on the day 
the labor men were to make their protest against biennials 
was met with the brutal answer: " If you go, you needn't 
come back. " At least two cases occurred in which labor 
men were threatened with discharge from employment if 
they attended the hearing and so showed their desire for 
annual elections. 

But not only does the truth in Governor Brackett's 
address apply to all labor legislation, but to reform meas- 
ures of every sort. Is there anywhere in the State any 
man or body of men who want better political methods, or 
have some measure for the good of the people which cuts 
across selfish interests, or are against the conservatism of 
the day, or strike at the power of aggrandized wealth, no 
such man or organization can have any hope of success with 
the legislature in its second year, if the measure of reform 
has been defeated the first. Has the Boston Municipal 
League any reform measure ? has any ingenious inventor 
any device for securing a better ballot ? is there any way of 
holding corporations to a closer account in the issue of 
stock or in the use of street franchises ? — if once the oppo- 
sition can carry the legislature it will hold it the second 
session also. Exceptions might occur, but men who have 
gone on record are slow to change unless extra cause can 
be shown. The odds would be tremendously against any 
reform or measure in the interest of the people which had 
to encounter strong corporate opposition. 

It is very likely that the failure of the biennialists to 



58 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

recognize the force of the labor argument arises from the 
same source as their argument for biennials in general, — 
their want of knowledge of many important factors in the 
case, and their superficial assumption that so much politics 
is unnecessary, and that that is all there is to be said. 
But there is plenty of official testimony to the high value to 
the State of the legislation in behalf of the labor interests. 
To go no further back than the report of the Chief of the 
District Police, Eufus E. Wade, for 1896, we find this: 
" Until one has familiarized himself with the history of 
what are often called the labor laws of our Commonwealth, 
he can have but an inadequate idea of the large field covered 
by legislation of this character. ... It must be conceded 
by all who are conversant with the history of labor legis- 
lation in this country that Massachusetts leads in the 
attempt to ameliorate the condition of her working popula- 
tion. In no other State is the scope of such legislation so 
broad and its details so elaborate. Tested by experience 
it would seem that the results aimed at have been in the 
main accomplished." 

Further on, page after page of this report emphasizes the 
benefit to the laboring people of the legislation in their 
behalf, especially that which has been enacted for the 
improvement of their education. This phase of the case is 
worthy of the attention of all who are interested, whether 
from selfish or philanthropic motives, in the elevation of 
the poorer classes in the State. No one who studies the 
progress of the working population can fail to recognize the 
immense gains they have made in an educational way. It 
is pertinent to remember, also, that a large proportion of 
the school children come from the working people, and 



LABOR'S VITAL INTEREST. 59 

that our working population has had, to a large extent, the 
benefit of our public school system. Now, as to the cash 
value to the State of our system of education, read the tes- 
timony of Prof. William T. Harris, the National Commis- 
sioner of Education : — 

" I find, by returns made to the National Bureau of Edu- 
cation, that the total amount of school education that each in- 
habitant of Massachusetts is receiving on an average — basing 
the calculation on the attendance in public and private schools 
and the length of the annual school term — is nearly seven 
years of two hundred days each, while the average given each 
citizen in the whole nation is only four and three tenths of 
such years. No other State is giving so much education to 
its people as Massachusetts, and yet all the education given 
in all its institutions does not amount on an average to so 
much as seven eighths of an elementary education of eight 
years. Even Massachusetts is not over-educating the people. 
But there would seem to be some connection between the fact 
that, while her citizens get nearly twice the national average 
amount of education, her wealth-producing power as compared 
with other States stands almost in the same ratio, namely 
(in 1885), at seventy-three cents per day for each man, woman, 
and child, while the average for the whole nation was only 
forty cents." 

This passage is quoted by the Secretary of the Massachu- 
setts Board of Education, Mr. Frank A. Hill, in his report 
for 1896. He adds the following comment : — ■ 

" Consider for a monent what is implied in this ratio of 
seventy-three to forty. It means for every man, woman, and 
child in the State an average wealth-producing power of thirty- 
three cents a day in excess of the average of the nation at 
large, or more than $100 a year. It means that the 2,500,000 



60 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

people in Massachusetts produce $250,000,000 a year more 
than they would produce if they were only average earners." 

What advocate of biennials ever hinted a word of this 
vital bearing of the case ? Yet there is a close connection 
between the frequent agitation which is possible under the 
system of annual elections and the progress the working 
people have made in general labor legislation for their 
benefit, and especially in their education. Biennial elec- 
tions mean nothing short of impeded progress, more dis- 
comfort, more unhealthfulness, more loss of life, more 
poverty, more ignorance for many thousands of our people. 

But annual elections are so particularly in the interest 
of the laboring people that they are justified in exerting 
themselves to the utmost to prevent the adoption of the 
biennial scheme. If they have any patriotism, any sense 
of the rights due to them as a class, any hope for the 
future, any manliness to resist the shackles which would 
be forged for them, they will oppose this movement with 
every energy in their power. If this were a case of fight- 
ing in arms, they would rally to resist the assault, and 
with firm ranks would exert their utmost force and courage 
to defend their liberties. The crisis is none the less be- 
cause it is to be settled in the field of peace, not by force 
of arms. Let them fight as resolutely as if in the field of 
war, contesting every inch of ground which is threatened, 
energetic, as brave as if in a forlorn hope, driving the 
opposition before them, and holding their rightful ground 
by their own firmness and devotion forever. 



IX. 

THE UNIT OF TIME. 

We may quickly dismiss, as too silly for consideration, 
the assertion that a consistent friend of annual elections 
ought to demand elections every six months, or every three 
months, just as it is too silly to argue that a consistent 
biennialist ought to favor quadrennials or never-ending 
terms of service without a return to the people. The 
friends of annual elections fix the duration of a term as one 
year because it is a fitting unit of time. This argument 
has occasioned great hilarity among the biennialists, and 
no end of immoderate ridicule. It has been asked : " What 
connection is there between legislation and planetary peri- 
odicity ? between crops of cabbages and crops of statutes ? " 
Forbearing a tempting retort, it is pertinent to say that if 
the reasons for a year as a unit of time which are advanced 
do not seem sufficient, they can be pronounced insufficient 
only by virtue of a better standard for the length of a term 
than one year. To make the. ridicule forceful there must 
be some sort of a term, of some length, which does bear a 
relation to the duties to be performed, to the fitness of the 
incumbent to perform them, and to the desire of the people 
to demand an accounting of their political servants. But 
not a hint of such a superior term was given by the peti- 
tioners for biennials. They nowhere gave the slightest 



62 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

intimation of the length of this ideal period which has no 
relation to the yearly basis. 

Still again, as there are different officers to be chosen, 
governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary, auditor, treasurer, 
attorney -general, councillor, senator, and representative, 
there must be a different ideal term for each wherein there 
would be a fitness of the time to the duties and to the 
necessity of a return to the people. But there was not a 
hint of this in the ridicule of the biennialists. In fact, 
the petitioners themselves take this same term, between 
which and crops of cabbages they affirm that there is no 
connection, and propose two of them instead of one. To 
this illogical extreme is this ridicule reduced, and, being 
without wit or wisdom, it vanishes into a sneer which is 
utterly baseless and has no pertinence to the case, except 
to reveal the frame of mind which stands against annual 
elections. 

But the friends of annual elections affirm positively that 
there is reason in the year as a unit of time. Human 
plans, as a rule, are made with the year as the unit, and 
human life flows on under this as a primary limitation. 
Trade and employment depend largely upon the seasons for 
their phases. Schools and other educational institutions 
observe the year as their unit. Agriculture recognizes con- 
spicuously this division of time. Town meetings are held 
to make appropriations on the basis of a year. City affairs 
are administered on this unit more than any other. In 
short, a year is the period within which the routine of 
events in many realms of life returns to the starting point, 
and there is a fitness that public affairs, which include 
business questions for State, city, and town, should recog- 



THE UNIT OF TIME. 63 

nize this universal unit of time. Multiples of this unit 
are the basis of terms for president, senators, congressmen, 
governors, and legislators generally. The annual election 
men assume the burden of proof and claim judgment for 
their side. 



X. 

OTHER STATES. 

As plausible a plea as any which are advanced by the 
friends of biennials is that other States have elections once 
in two years, or less frequently; that the system is suc- 
cessful with them, and therefore it will be in Massachu- 
setts ; that out of our seventy million of people nearly all 
have less frequent elections, and that it is ridiculous and 
conceited to suppose that our two million five hundred 
thousand in Massachusetts know more than all the re- 
mainder of the country. As the stronghold of the annual- 
elections cause in Massachusetts has been in the laboring 
men, particular attention has been paid to them lately, and 
the example of other States has been cited to prove that the 
Massachusetts workingmen are mistaken when they cling 
so desperately to their political rights. More attention 
was paid in 1896 than ever before to the labor side of the 
contest, and the biennialists produced evidence from the 
labor bureaus of Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, 
Maryland, Tennessee, Minnesota, Michigan, North Caro- 
lina, Mississippi, Colorado, Nebraska, Indiana, and Mon- 
tana to show that the laboring people in those States 
are contented and do not wish for annual sessions. The 
climax is capped by saying that Commissioner Carroll D. 
Wright gives assurance that he has never seen any 



OTHER STATES. 65 

opposition to biennial elections by labor men except in 
Massachusetts. 

Now this argument for the labor men is easily disposed 
of. The opinion of Commisioner Wright doubtless expresses 
the truth, that the Massachusetts laboring men are the only 
ones in the Union who have opposed biennials. To that 
statement need be added only the words of Chief Wade of 
the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 1896, 
elsewhere quoted : " It must be conceded by all who are 
conversant with the history of labor legislation in this 
country that Massachusetts leads in the attempt to ameli- 
orate the condition of her working population. In no other 
State is the scope of such legislation so broad and its details 
so elaborate. " These two statements dispose of the labor 
comparison. On one side is indifference to political rights, 
duties, and opportunities. On the other is a jealous defence 
of them, accompanied by greater progress and more benefit 
to the laboring people than in any other State in the 
country. 

In regard to the other respects in which other States are 
held up as models for Massachusetts, evidence has been 
submitted by the petitioners for biennials repeatedly. Two 
crops of opinions have been gathered and printed to show 
how much better off the States are with biennials. The 
first was published some years ago, and covered replies from 
thirty-three governors and other prominent men who favored 
biennial elections, or sessions, or both. Of these, sixteen 
say that the expense and legislation is less under biennials, 
and give no other reason. Five put their approval wholly 
on the ground of saving expense ; three on the ground that 
it saves political agitation; one mainly on the ground of 

5 



66 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

less expense ; one wholly on the ground of less legislation ; 
seven give no particular reason, but say that biennials are 
better, or that the people are satisfied. Not one of them 
seems to have any idea of the State as a growing organism 
with a thousand wants, pressing faster than the people can 
satisfy. The entire group of replies is unworthy of the 
magnitude of the question, and contains no realization of 
the immense concerns to labor and capital which are 
involved. The nature of the replies proves the incompe- 
tence of the witnesses, for the vital issues which are con- 
cerned do not seem to have entered their thoughts. 

The second ingathering of opinions brought replies from 
twenty-six executive departments. Most of them put their 
support of biennials on general grounds, seventeen of them 
properly coming under the classification that the system 
works well and the people do not want a change, with no 
more thoughtful consideration of the subject than that. 
Others say that there is less legislation and less expense 
than under annual elections, two or three say that agitation 
is saved and that business is benefited, but most of the 
detailed support for infrequent elections, when detail is 
mentioned, is on the ground of expense. 

Such is the unworthy character of the testimony which 
is flourished before the people of Massachusetts to prove 
that they would be better off with less frequent elections. 
This testimony is no proof that in the hundreds of points 
in which the laws come close to the people the citizens of 
the other States are better served and protected than are 
those of Massachusetts. This entire correspondence does 
reveal, however, the ignorance of political development and 
the disinclination to study politics in the best sense, which 



OTHER STATES. 67 

is the shame of Massachusetts business men to-day. Tes- 
timony from such a source cannot have weight, for it is 
tainted with the evil which is at the root of much political 
inertia and corruption. The testimony is too vague to be 
any reason why Massachusetts should change her system. 

A further fact to be observed in this executive correspon- 
dence is that it does not bear upon the system proposed in 
Massachusetts. In all the twenty-six letters there is not 
one word upon a system of biennial elections of State 
officers and of the legislature, with annual legislative ses- 
sions. The mass of testimony, more or less vague and 
impertinent, may at first confuse the reader, who does not 
stop to think what is proposed here and what is the exact 
question which the people of Massachusetts have to decide. 
But there is not a single case in the entire list where a 
plan is in operation like that which is proposed for Massa- 
chusetts. Besides, as much of the testimony is in favor 
of biennial sessions as of biennial elections, and it is so 
clearly against the interests of Massachusetts to have bien- 
nial sessions that the friends of that change have given up 
their contest, for the present, at least, until they can carry 
biennial elections and get the legislature more thoroughly 
under their control. So the direct testimony in favor of 
other States as against Massachusetts amounts to nothing, 
practically, in solving the question of the expediency of 
biennial elections with annual sessions, while the testimony 
on the labor phase is directly in favor of Massachusetts. 

But the friends of the Massachusetts system need not 
stop with merely showing that the biennialists have failed 
to make out a case from the other States. They may con- 
fidently assume a burden of proof which does not belong to 



(58 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

them, and assert that the annual system of Massachusetts 
is an essential feature in the complicated total of forces 
which make Massachusetts eminent in the sisterhood of 
States. Abundant evidence is at hand, coming from 
different departments of our State government. 

Massachusetts is a pioneer in legislation. She copies 
very little from other States, whereas other States copy 
frpm her very much. This is well known at the State 
House. It is a permanent condition. The very illustra- 
tions which were given at the hearing to prove that Massa- 
chusetts takes precedents from other States and countries 

— the employers' liability law and the Australian ballot 

— are just the exceptions which prove the rule. Scarcely 
anything does Massachusetts take from any other source. 
She is solving her problems by the light of her own experi- 
ence and judgment, because so few precedents can be found 
in other States. She is ready and willing to learn. At no 
time has there been shown any disposition to reject any 
aid which can be given by any sister State. But the truth 
is that other States have not passed legislation, as a rule, 
which can be a guide for Massachusetts. 

She was foremost in the Union to adopt the Australian 
ballot act. Only one other State to-day has a civil service 
act, though she passed hers in 1884. Her corporation legis- 
lation of 1894 was a pioneer step on which other States 
shed no light. Her entire body of labor laws is original 
and advanced. Her educational system is so conspicuous 
above that of others that commissioners from several foreign 
countries, visiting at the Chicago exhibition, declared that 
Massachusetts led the Union, and the authorities of Jamaica, 
wishing to stimulate educational interests on the island, after 



OTHER STATES. 69 

looking over the field, invited the secretary of the Massa- 
chusetts Board of Education to give a course of pedagogical 
lectures in Kingston, which he did. Massachusetts insur- 
ance laws are a guide for other States to a remarkable 
degree, and the Massachusetts legislature is one of the few 
points in the entire country where insurance men keep their 
eyes fixed. These executives who commended their bien- 
nial and quadrennial systems said that they resulted in 
better legislation. Better than what? They are not yet 
up to the standard where Massachusetts can copy them. 
Their systems may do for people with less diversity of 
interests, with less complications of development, with less 
density of population than Massachusetts, but the fact that 
Montana, or Vermont, or even larger States get along with 
biennial sessions of the legislature and infrequent elections 
of State officials, is by no means a demonstration that 
Massachusetts would advance under biennials as rapidly as 
she does under annual elections and sessions. Other States 
would doubtless be benefited by more attention to public 
business; and if they are to keep up in the race for the 
prizes of civilization they must put more thought into pub- 
lic affairs, must look more closely after the organic growth 
of the State, must do more for their lower classes, and must 
adopt the system of annual elections and annual legislative 
sessions. They will find plenty of solid, legitimate work 
to do for the State. They will find problems which will 
demand all the knowledge and experience they can muster 
within their own borders, and they will learn, too, if they 
attend to their public concerns faithfully, that it will be 
time well spent. It may be reasonably expected that, with 
the revival of civic virtue, which must surely come if our 



70 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

country is to survive, the true policy of attending to public 
business promptly will prevail, and that the annual system 
will be warmly espoused where it is now held in discredit. 

A few further points regarding other States will emphasize 
the inconclusiveness of arguing from their case to that of 
Massachusetts. Only fifteen States fail to limit the legis- 
lative session. The time permitted is forty, forty -five, fifty, 
ixty, seventy, seventy -five, arid ninety days in the several 
instances, but there is nothing longer than the last figure, 
and only five States permit as long sessions as that. All of 
the States have biennial sessions, except six, which have 
annuals, — Massachusetts, Khode Island, New York, New 
Jersey, South Carolina, and Georgia. Yet the effort^ for 
biennial sessions in Massachusetts is condemned by most 
people, and the folly of introducing the practice of other 
States in limiting the length of the session has been so evi- 
dent, in its application to Massachusetts, that the proposi- 
tion, whenever made, has never had a respectable standing. 
The idea of putting a time limit upon such important busi- 
ness as legislation, compared with any possible gain from 
it, has caused the instant rejection of the proposition when- 
ever made. 

Testimony to the superiority of Massachusetts in legis- 
lation to other States, and hence the reasonableness that 
other States should imitate her, instead of her imitating 
them, is found in the summary of the important legislation 
for 1895, which was presented to the American Bar Associ- 
ation in August, 1895, by its president, James C. Carter. 
Here is a trained lawyer, giving to his professional associ- 
ates a summary of new legislation according to its impor- 
tance. Massachusetts, in this summary by titles, occupies 



OTHER STATES. 71 

one-half more space for the recital than any other State, 
and remember that this is a measure by quality, not by 
quantity. There are twenty-nine States in the list, and 
Massachusetts occupies one-ninth of the entire space given 
to mention of important laws. Here is a further proof 
among the many that Massachusetts is addressing herself 
to the problems of the times, and is advancing faster in 
the promotion of prosperity and in the establishment of jus- 
tice in matters of detail than any other State in the Union. 
Furthermore, as Massachusetts has annual sessions, while 
others, as a rule, have biennial, the force of the demonstra- 
tion is emphasized, for her growth was that of one year 
only, while that of most of the others covered two years. 

One phase of the argument for biennial elections, drawn 
from other States, is that a larger percentage of the vote 
comes out with biennial elections than with annual elec- 
tions, and the figures support the assertion both in regard to 
other States and in regard to the presidential and congres- 
sional elections in Massachusetts. But let us consider a 
moment. What is wanted, first of all, is good government. 
Popular interest is very desirable, but there are different 
qualities of interest. Now, here is one conspicuous fact, 
that in Massachusetts both elections and legislation are 
less on a partisan plane than in any other State. Causes 
stand more upon their merits than in any other State of 
the Union. This is no small tribute to the merits of the 
Massachusetts system. In the party contests of presiden- 
tial and congressional years the lines are drawn largely on 
the basis of prejudice and self-interest. The merits of the 
case have less weight. The full vote is a partisan vote, 
and this is true of the full votes of Massachusetts as it is 



72 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

true of other States. In the off years the vote which comes 
out is the active partisan vote which is always on guard 
and does not miss a chance to go to the polls, and the 
thoughtful vote, really desirous of the good of the State. 
The vote which does not come out is the apathetic partisan 
vote which needs to be stirred by strong party appeals in 
order to rouse itself to an expression, or to withdraw itself 
for an hour from the absorption of business. An illustra- 
tion of this truth was given in Massachusetts in the excep- 
tional off year, 1883, when Governor Butler was candidate 
for re-election. Strong appeals to republican party spirit 
and to prejudice against the governor, even admitting all 
that may be said of the interest in good government, were 
instrumental in drawing out a phenomenal vote on each 
side. The election of 1884 illustrated the independent 
spirit which prevails in Massachusetts, when forty thous- 
and republican votes refused to stand by the presidential 
nominee. In no other State was there anything like this 
revolt against the candidate. The presidential vote of 
1888 illustrates the fact that it is the apathetic partisan 
vote which comes out with a full vote, for the State was 
scraped as scarcely ever before in order to carry it for the 
republican candidate, and it was the aged republican re- 
serves who constituted a material part of that very full 
vote. The lack of partisanship in Massachusetts compared 
with other States is illustrated by the three elections of 
Governor Bussell, with republicans successful on the re- 
mainder of the State ticket, with the council seven-eighths 
republican, and with a strong republican majority in the 
legislature. Would any of the other States have so per- 
sisted in political discrimination ? Would they have so 



OTHER STATES. 73 

responded to a test of average political intelligence and 
freedom from machine control ? It was in Massachusetts 
that William Everett was elected to Congress from a dis- 
trict in which he was not a resident, and in 1895 Harvey 
N. Shepard was a candidate in a district in which he did 
not live. Only a small part of Massachusetts legislation is 
shaped by partisanship. It is a fair conclusion that Massa- 
chusetts politics are less partisan, more discriminating and 
more healthful, than they are in any other State. Part of 
the credit is due to our political system of discussion, of 
agitation, of familiarity with public men, events, and issues. 
The feeling that if a mistake is made regarding a State 
official or legislator it can be rectified within a year doubt- 
less leads to the toleration of independence in voting, to 
the willingness to give a man of the other side a chance, if 
he displays exceptional ability, and to the impossibility of 
drawing party lines so close as to make the machine irre- 
sistible, impregnable, and perpetual. If the people of 
Massachusetts want to put their State under the domina- 
tion of rings and bosses, if they want their public concerns 
to be managed on the basis of prejudice and passion, rather 
than upon the merits of the issues which are pending, if 
they want to make political slaves of themselves for the 
benefit of a tyrannical few to whom they shall pay the taxes 
and to whose corrupt, imperial will they must bow, to the 
permanent loss of the liberties gained by the blood of their 
fathers and of the rights which are inherent in all self- 
respecting manhood, let them adopt the biennial system of 
other States and confess that their present system is a 
failure. But if they have any appreciation of their superi- 
ority over these States, which are cited as examples, they 



74 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

will cling tenaciously to their system of frequent returns of 
officials to the people, and of holding their representatives 
to a strict annual accounting. 

So, to the biennialists who would persuade us to give up 
our rights and privileges by citing other States, we say, 
K We are fully convinced by the examples you have offered 
us that we are right and they are wrong. For the occasion 
of this demonstration we thank you. " 



XI. 

THE EXPENSE. 

Foetunately, it is now only the business man who 
objects to annual elections upon the ground of expense. 
This plea has been advanced with vigor in the past, and it 
was the burden of some of the leading representatives of 
the boards of trade in 1896, who were giving their reasons 
why annual elections should be abolished. One of the 
speakers affirmed with all the earnestness of deep convic- 
tion that in the competition of business the expense of an 
annual election was more than the manufacturing and 
commercial interests of the State could endure. But this 
argument was expressly disclaimed by the gentleman who 
conducted the case for the petitioners and by others on that 
side. They agreed with the remonstrants that the expense 
was not to be considered in comparison with the vital 
interests at stake, and that it was to be brought into the 
account only as it could be shown that the expense was 
needless, or worse. 

But, though the friends of biennials have abandoned 
their contention, yet, as it may be urged hereafter, by those 
who are not aware that it has been rejected by their own 
side as too insignificant to take into the account, the chief 
facts may be gathered here in small compass. The annual 



76 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

appropriation from the State treasury for its part of the cost 
of the annual election is $10,000. There may be extras 
sometimes which cause a deficit, but that is the usual sum. 
In regard to the cost to the cities and towns, there are nine 
hundred and fifty -three voting precincts in the State, of 
which two hundred and five are in Boston. Each voting 
precinct must have six election officers, and there may be 
more in certain cases. In at least one case the pay is 
$12 for the day for each man. In most of the precincts it 
will probably not go above $5, while in many towns it is 
doubtless less. The expense to Boston of a single election 
is $10,000, besides the erection and removal of the booths, 
the hack hire to take the ballot-boxes to the polls and bring 
them back. But Boston's average per precinct is doubt- 
less higher than it is through the State. But on that basis 
the cost to the cities and towns would be almost exactly 
$50, 000. Add the $10, 000 paid by the State, and the total is 
$60,000 which appears in the State and municipal tax bills. 
Added to this must be the voluntary expenses for campaign 
work, printing, hall rent, canvassers, brass bands, carriage 
hire, refreshments, and a thousand incidentals whose totals 
can be only guessed at, but which are doubtless beyond the 
official expenses. As it is only the campaigns of the off 
year which are to be saved, it is the expenses of those 
years only, not of presidential and congressional years, 
which need be considered. In 1895 the republican 
State committee spent $19,866.43 and the democratic 
State committee $5,193.56. Expenses of local commit- 
tees and of candidates must have added materially to the 
total. 

But the charge is that the State " cannot afford the 



THE EXPENSE. 77 

expense. " Let us see. Here are figures which so overtop 
all the possible totals on the other side that they dispose, 
in a moment, of the plea that the State cannot afford the 
expense of an election on the off years. According to the 
valuation of the taxable property in Massachusetts in 1892, 
which was made by Commissioner Endicott (and many mil- 
lions are not taxable), there was $2,429,832,966. Under 
exactly the same system of computation, by the same 
official, there was 82,653,934,509 in 1895, or a gain in 
the three years of $224,101,543. This valuation was made 
for the purpose of fixing the basis of the State tax. Here 
was a net gain in the three years of $204,472 for every 
day, including Sundays and holidays, notwithstanding the 
fact that these three years covered the longest and most 
severe depression in business known for a long time. Com- 
pare the net gain in property of the people of Massachusetts 
in one day with what they spend for political purposes in 
the entire year, and it is seen that their patriotism and 
politics are very cheap from a financial point of view. The 
objection of expense is too trivial to be entertained a 
moment. 

Two further considerations are to be added as final nails 
in the coffin of this bugbear of expense. One is that with 
the improved voting machines which are sure to be adopted 
within a few years — unless the signs fail — the expenses 
in the precincts will be materially reduced. The other is 
that, — as appears from the campaign in Boston, in Decem- 
ber, 1895, as well as from the argument of the biennialists 
themselves, that greater interest would be taken in the 
even years, — the expenses of the biennial campaigns will 
be larger than they would be if annual elections were 



78 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

continued. The gain of the off year would be materially 
spent in the even year, and the people would save little. 
Hence it is well that this objection to annual elections, 
that the people cannot afford them, has been formally 
abandoned. 



XII. 
THE COUNTRY TOWNS. 

It was no accident, but a part of the uniform far-seeing 
management of the biennial campaign in the legislature of 
1896, which left the redisricting order on the table of the 
House till the biennial amendment was out of the way. If 
the country republicans had realized how severe a loss of 
political power they were voting upon their constituents 
they would not have been so unanimous in their response 
to the corporation pull from the cities and large towns 
which have, in this respect, another point to gain from their 
country cousins. 

It is the practice, in many districts where several towns 
are combined for the election of a representative, to appor- 
tion to the several towns the number of years out of the ten 
before the next redistricting which each town shall have. 
Of course the large towns predominate. In the case of a 
small town being added to a city district, the effect is the 
same. Under the annual system of elections, some of the 
towns with small population have been able to secure 
the representative only one of the ten years. Of course 
under the biennial system these towns will be cut down to 
one year in twenty, at best, and practically they will fare 
worse than that, for the small towns will be sacrificed for 
the politicians in their larger neighbors, and some of them 



80 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

will never be able, save by lucky chance, to send a repre- 
sentative to the legislature. The adoption of the biennial 
system means that separate towns, each of which is a 
municipal individual with its corporate wants, interests, 
and dangers, will be hereafter forever shut off from sending 
to the court of the people any representative of their own to 
plead their cause. They will be forever dependent upon 
some neighboring town, and it is to be remembered that 
towns are sometimes antagonistic to one another, as well as 
friendly, and that it is not safe to sacrifice one's political 
self utterly. The proposition to condemn entire municipal 
corporations to be forever unrepresented in the legislature is 
monstrous. But this is what biennials involve. 

Besides this, many more towns which now have repre- 
sentatives only two or three years in the ten will be very 
likely to suffer, while there will surely be an average loss 
of one-half all around. This fate concerns many towns and 
many individuals, for it says to citizens of particular towns : 
* You can have no political future if you live in this town. 
No matter how honorable your ambition, or how much 
your townsmen may desire to send you to represent them, 
your case is hopeless from the very beginning. Let every 
man in this town abandon forever all hope of political life. * 
Look over the list of towns which are certain to lose under 
the biennial system. It will be found longer, doubtless, 
than most of the people are aware. Take them by counties, 
leaving out the cities and the large towns. Every town in 
the following list will lose more or less of its political 
importance if the biennial system is established : — 

Essex county — Salisbury, Merrimac, West Newbury, 
Methuen, Bradford, North Andover, Groveland, Georgetown, 



THE COUNTRY TOWNS. 81 

Boxford, Topsfield, Newbury, Rowley, Hamilton, Wenham, 
Essex, Manchester, Nab ant, Saugus, Danvers, Middleton. 

Middlesex county — Belmont, Weston, Lexington, Lincoln, 
Concord, Bedford, Burlington, Chelmsford, Billerica, Tewks- 
bury, Wilmington, North Reading, Dracut, Tyngsboro, Ash- 
land, Holliston, Hopkinton, Sherborn, Wayland, Sudbury, 
Maynard, Stow, Boxboro, Littleton, Acton, Carlisle, Westford, 
Groton, Pepperell, Dunstable, Ayer, Shirley, Townsend, Ashby. 

Worcester county — Royalston, Phillipston, Templeton, Ash- 
burnharn, Barre, Dana, Petersham, Hard wick, Rutland, West- 
minster, Hubbardston, Princeton, Holden, Paxton, Brookfield, 
West Brookfield, New Braintree, Oakham, Sturbridge, W r arren, 
Leicester, Charlton, Dudley, Oxford, Auburn, Douglas, Mill- 
bury, Sutton, Uxbridge, Upton, Mendon, Hopedale, Northboro, 
Southboro, Berlin, Shrewsbury, Boylston, Bolton, W T est Boyls- 
ton, Harvard, Lancaster, Sterling, Lunenburg. 

Hampshire county — Southampton, Chesterfield, Cumming- 
ton, Goshen, Huntington, Middlefield, Plainfield, Westhampton, 
Worthington, Hatfield, Hadley, Williamsburg, Belchertown, 
Granby, Enfield, Greenwich, Pelham, Prescott. 

Hampden county — Chester, Blandford, Tolland, Granville, 
Southwick, Agawam, Montgomery, Russell, East Longmeadow, 
Longmeadow, Hampden, Wilbraham, Wales, Ludlow, Brim- 
field, Holland. 

Franklin county — Shelburne, Bernardston, Warwick, New 
Salem, Erving, Shutesbury, Northfield, Gill, Wendell, Leverett, 
Sunderland, Whately, Conway, Ashfield, Buckland, Charle- 
mont, Colrain, Hawley, Heath, Leyden, Rowe, Monroe. 

Berkshire county — New Ashford, Florida, Clarksburg, 
Cheshire, Savoy, Hancock, Lanesboro, Windsor, Peru, Hins- 
dale, Washington, Richmond, Stockbridge, Becket, West Stock- 
bridge, Alford, Egremont, Monterey, Otis, Sandisfield, New 
Marlboro, Sheffield, Mount Washington, Tyringham. 

Norfolk county — Holbrook, Avon, Sharon, Walpole, Bel- 
lingham, Wrentham, Medway, Norfolk, Needham, Dover, 
Medfield, Wellesley, Millis. 



82 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

Plymouth county — Marshfield, Plympton, Kingston, Dux- 
bury, Scituate, Nor well, Hanson, Pembroke, Cohasset, Hull, 
Hanover, Mattapoisett, Marion, Rochester, Carver, Lakeville, 
Halifax, West Bridge water. 

Bristol county — Norton, Seekonk, Raynham, Acushnet, Free- 
town, Dighton, Somerset, Swanzey, Rehoboth. 

The Cape district — Falmouth, Bourne, Sandwich, Mashpee, 
Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, Chatham, Brewster, Orleans, 
Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, Chilmark, Cottage City, Edgartown, 
Gay Head, Gosnold, Tisbury, West Tisbury. 

It is a sound argument, from the point of view of the legis- 
lature, that it would be well if the rural members were 
elected for more than one term. The full force of the argu- 
ment from experience may be admitted willingly. But 
none the less is it desirable to keep the representatives close 
to the people by a yearly return and by a lively sense of 
their accountability. 

But even the present system of rotation so that rural 
members serve only one year has its reason of weight in its 
favor, even though it be admitted that it would be better 
if members were re-elected for a second term. All is not 
loss. A stable government depends upon an intelligent 
and willing people. Now, in our democracy, resting upon 
the mass of the people, it is no small strength of the system 
that there are scattered all through the small towns promi- 
nent citizens who have been sent to the legislature, who 
have themselves had a share in the making of the laws and 
are somewhat familiar with the way in which business is 
done at the centre of government in Boston. Such an ele- 
ment in the population must be a material factor on the side 
of order, content, information, and good government. 



XIII. 

THIS WILL NOT BE SETTLED UNTIL IT IS 
SETTLED RIGHT. 

One of the pleas for submitting to the people the amend- 
ment for biennial elections has been that the question conies 
up every year, taking the time of the committee and of the 
legislature, and that this agitation ought to cease. If the 
question were submitted to the people, it is argued, and a 
popular verdict obtained, as in the case of the prohibitory 
amendment, there would be for a generation an end of agi- 
tation over the subject. This might be so if the verdict 
should go strongly against biennials, but on no other con- 
dition. If the amendment were defeated by a small margin, 
its friends would hope for conversions enough by further 
agitation to enable them to carry their point. They would 
be as eager to come to the legislature as ever, until their 
constant defeats assured them that the sober sense of the 
people is in favor of annual elections. 

But, if the amendment were unfortunately adopted, then 
surely there would be no end of the agitation. No time 
could possibly be saved to the committee or to the legisla- 
ture. Here is just how the case would stand : The entire 
class of the population, known by common consent as " the 
working people, " would believe that they had been deprived 
of their political rights by the power of corporations and by 



84 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

influences hostile to them. They have been accustomed to 
annual elections ; they are firmly convinced that it is not 
only for their own good, but also for the good of the entire 
State, that elections should be held every year. They are 
intelligent American citizens, with a manly sense of the 
high character of political rights and duties. They will not 
surrender these without a long, bitter, and determined con- 
test. The agitation over biennials would be only begun if 
the amendment should be adopted by the people as a whole. 
Joined with these citizens in sentiment would be a large 
number of intelligent men not of their class. The ques- 
tion would come up as frequently as the legislature should 
assemble " for the redress of grievances. " With all the 
force of conviction that they were demanding only their 
rights in comparison with other classes in the State, with 
all the persistence of men who are fighting for a cause in 
which surrender means further political subjugation to 
those who are already superior to them in industrial con- 
cerns, and who hold in their hands, often unworthily, the 
happiness of their wives and children, these men would 
never cease to agitate for their political rights. The per- 
sistence of Eussia in seeking Constantinople, the valor of 
the Three Hundred Greeks at Thermopylae would not 
exceed the dogged persistence, plus the fighting bravery, 
with Which the contest would be maintained. A genera- 
tion might pass with no end to the conflict, unless it were 
settled right. 

But there is another phase of the situation which would 
inevitably exist. The labor representatives would surely 
have some representatives in the legislature, even under 
the biennial system. They would not be left wholly power- 



WILL NOT BE SETTLED UNTIL SETTLED RIGHT. 85 

less. But all over the State there would be the certainty, 
which would be brought to a focus in the legislature, that 
their political rights, involving much material gain, peace, 
and prosperity for themselves and families, had been 
wrested from them unjustly. There would surely result 
a constant hostility between employers and employed, 
causing ceaseless friction in the daily relations in life, and 
sure to find expression in the legislature in objection to 
whatever measures were believed to be in the interest of 
capital. If it were possible to defeat any bill which a 
corporation wanted, the chances would be that such de- 
feat would be compassed. Frequently the contest between 
the different sides of measures affecting corporations are 
about evenly balanced. With a body of men, year after 
year, permanently hostile to corporations, there would 
surely be an effect upon legislation which might delay acts 
really beneficial, but which would be sacrificed to the abid- 
ing hostility engendered by this assault upon the political 
rights of the working classes. 

If any man had the remotest idea that the submission of 
the amendment to the people would put an end to the agi- 
tation, let him calmly consider the situation, let him 
recognize the every-day elements in human nature, and he 
will revise his judgment and admit that so vital a matter 
as this is not so easily and summarily put out of mind. 



XIV. 

THIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 

Ever since 1875, with the exception of 1887, the move^ 
ment for biennials has been before the legislature. In its 
original form it was for biennial elections and biennial 
sessions of the legislature. The first four years of its 
appearance it had no appreciable support, but the com- 
mittee reported unanimously against it, and adverse action 
was taken without a division. Then came a sudden change 
in 1879. The amendment was favorably reported and had one 
hundred and seventy yeas to twenty -two nays in the House, 
and a unanimous vote in the Senate. But its second year 
it was defeated. The contest continued along that line for 
several years, both kinds of biennials being demanded by 
the agitators for a change. But the legislature could not 
be carried. Then the tactics were changed ; the principle 
of " divide and conquer " was introduced. It was seen that 
the objections to biennial sessions were so strong that no 
sort of biennials could be carried if this provision were 
retained. So, in late years, the effort has been to secure 
biennial elections alone. On this line the agitation has 
been conducted. But for years no headway was made. 
Up to the session of 1895 it seemed perfectly clear that 
the measure would never again compel the support of even 
two-thirds in any one house, to say nothing of two houses 



THE LAST CAMPAIGN. 87 

in succession. The votes in 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1894 
seemed to guarantee the final defeat of the cause, and the 
rapidly approaching end of the agitation. 

But with the session of 1895 it soon became evident to 
a watchful observer that a new force had entered into the 
contest, that there were resources available which were 
hitherto unknown, and that there was a determination to 
win at whatever cost of effort, which had never been felt 
in any previous contest for this assault upon the rights 
and privileges of the people. Of course the leaders in this 
movement have not proclaimed their plans to the world, 
Naturally they have kept them under cover. Only by acci- 
dent are they discovered, like haphazard discoveries in a 
chemist's laboratory, or the casual revelation of the plans 
of a military campaign. Early in 1895 a newspaper man 
was visited by a representative of one of the leading corpo- 
rations and asked to use his influence in his newspaper 
writing in behalf of biennials. That corporation was then 
notorious for its defiance of State authorities, and its legis- 
lative counsel, with the counsel of a similar corporation, 
was charged by a republican member in 1896, with " trying 
to run the legislature. " With this request for newspaper 
service was made the statement that it had been proposed 
to raise $20,000 for the sake of putting the amendment 
through the legislature of 1895, but that the plan had been 
abandoned for another. 

Further evidence that a great deal of quiet and hitherto 
unsuspected work had been done with the legislature 
appeared in the current impression that the amendment 
would be passed in 1895. The feeling about it was some- 
thing which had never been known before at the State 



88 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

House. It was as different from the usual condition as a 
cold overcast sky from the pure ethereal blue. Any one 
sensitive to the facts could not but feel the difference even 
before the vote was taken. Something or other had been 
at work, and it seemed to be agreed all around that the 
amendment was sure to pass that time, no matter what 
was said or done. The vote in the House bore out this 
impression wonderfully, for there were one hundred and 
sixty-three yeas to fifty-seven nays, and two pairs, on the 
roll-call. Yet the case for the petitioners had been pre- 
sented no more forcibly than usual. No stronger evidence 
had been adduced before the committee. But the work 
had been done somehow. 

When the time came for the vote to be taken in the 
House there was another demonstration that there was a 
singular influence at work. But equally significant was 
the following circular, which was distributed to the House 
on Monday, February 18, 1895 : — 

"Dear Sir, — The biennial election resolves for submission 
of the question to the people will come up for action by special 
assignment on Wednesday next, February 20, at 3 o'clock 
P. M. The constitution requires that the vote must be taken 
by yeas and nays, and a two-thirds' vote of the members present 
and voting will be required to pass the resolves. You are 
earnestly requested to be present or secure a pair in favor of 
the passage of the resolves. By request of Barker of Hanson, 
Phelps of North Adams, McCarthy of Boston, Duddy of Som- 
erville, Hibbard of Boston, Howe of Marlboro, House members 
of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments." 

The important words were italicized, the most signifi- 
cant being "pair," to which peculiar force attached, as 



THE LAST CAMPAIGN. 89 

appears from trie following circular, which was issued by 
the other side to counteract the effect of the first : — 

" The opponents of annual elections will try to pass the bien- 
nial resolve on next Wednesday, February 20, 1895, at three 
P. M. Don't pair. One negative vote is worth two affirmative 
votes." 

Probably such an appeal by members of a legislative 
committee to the House to be present and vote on a ques- 
tion has never been known before in the history of Massa- 
chusetts legislation, no matter how important the issue at 
stake. This is only one more demonstration that unusual 
exertions were put forth in this particular campaign for 
the passage of the resolve, and that influences were at work 
wholly out of the common line. 

When it came to the legislature of 1896 there was dis- 
played another singular line of policy on the part of the 
biennial managers. The old line of argument was prac- 
tically abandoned. The familiar plea that it would be best 
to elect the governor for two years, the picture of a happy 
executive freed from the anxieties of seeking a re-election 
before he had warmed his chair, the arguments from the 
benefit of experience which have constituted the main 
reasons for biennials in the past, were practically dropped. 
The long rows of figures to prove the indifference of voters 
on off years were relegated to the background. The com- 
parisons with other States, which had become so familiar 
.both to the petitioners and remonstrants, were barely heard 
of. All these considerations were dismissed with only 
brief allusion in 1896. The argument of expense, which had 
up to that time been emphasized upon the committee, was 



90 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

practically abandoned, and it was admitted in so many 
words by the petitioners, that the expense was not an item 
worth considering in connection with the issue at stake. 
So that point was at last reduced to its proper insignificance. 
There was a practical desertion of the old familiar argu- 
ments upon which the fight had been made in all previous 
years. 

The new line of attack upon the existing custom was 
practically confined to two points, in the main, — that fre- 
quent elections disturbed business, and that by biennial 
elections with annual sessions, there would be an improve- 
ment in the quality of legislation. It has been a distinct 
triumph for the friends of annual elections that the biennial- 
ists have been forced to abandon their old ground. They 
could never have persuaded the people upon them, but 
there was a certain plausibility in the reasoning that a 
governor would gain by experience ; the annual men have 
not denied that. But the new arguments are manifestly 
weaker than the old ones. They are not even plausible 
when they are seen in their full extent, and if it were a 
question of reason, the biennial men would have been over- 
thrown, horse, foot, and dragoons. The inconclusive nature 
of the arguments presented in 1896 for biennials is demon- 
strated on other pages. It is enough to show here the new 
tactics, and to point out that the new strength of the case is 
not due in the slightest degree to the weight of the argu- 
ments presented. Other forces than reason have been at 
work. They have triumphed, and it is for the State to see 
distinctly what those forces are. 



XV. 
CORPORATIONS AND BIENNIALS. 

It is impossible to obtain evidence regarding the course 
of the corporations, except by accident. But a strong side 
light is thrown upon this last and successful campaign for 
biennials in the legislature by a study of certain facts which 
have been clear at the State House. Up to 1895 the bien- 
nial amendment had not passed the legislature after 1890. 
In the latter year it had one hundred and forty -three yea 
votes to thirty-eight nays, the opposition making no show 
of fight to speak of. In 1891 the vote was one hundred 
and sixteen yeas to one hundred and one nays. In 1892 it 
was one hundred and twenty yeas to eighty-seven nays. In 
1893 it was ninety-three yeas to eighty-one nays. In 1894 
it was one hundred and six yeas to eighty-three nays. Here 
was a marvellous loss of strength from that unthinking vote 
on the first contested year of the amendment when it had 
only twenty-two votes in opposition in the House, and had 
the unanimous vote of the Senate. The labor men had be 
come alarmed, and it was as clear as sunlight that the 
amendment would never be able to pass the legislature 
under the existing conditions. 

But in 1895 came a great change over the situation. The 
vote was one hundred and sixty-three to fifty-seven, though 
the opposition made a good front in the committee hearing. 
Had anything occurred in the session or campaign of 1894 



92 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

to produce this change in the legislature of 1895 ? A little 
study will reveal a great change in the situation. 

It will be remembered that 1894 was the year of the 
most important corporation legislation which had ever 
passed the Massachusetts legislature. Strides toward the 
control of the corporations by the people were taken which 
were nothing short of marvellous in comparison with what 
had gone before. The legislation for the control of corpora- 
tions of a quasi public nature which had been brought in 
near the end of the session of 1893, and had been defeated 
by a narrow margin, had been pushed before the legislature 
of 1894 by an organization of the business men of Boston, 
and had been enacted into law. This legislation was based 
upon the competition of trade ; it was not founded upon a 
broad outlook over the field of popular interest versus cor- 
porate interests, but was due to a clash between the great 
transportation companies and the merchants served by them. 
The latter triumphed in the contest, and the railroads and 
other corporations were hotly indignant. The most impor- 
tant acts were those which related to the issue of stock and 
bonds and to increases of capital stock by railroad, street 
railway, gas, electric light, aqueduct and water companies, 
and companies formed for the purpose of transmitting intel- 
ligence by electricity. Absolute control over their issues 
was given to the commissioners in these several departments. 
Prodigious kicking resulted on the part of the corporations. 
In private their counsel, and doubtless their stockholders 
and officers, denounced the legislature in the strongest 
terms. That was one feature of the session of 1894 to be 
held in mind. 

Other corporation legislation of great importance was 



CORPORATIONS AND BIENNIALS. 93 

enacted, but only after highly exciting scenes and after 
occurrences which seemed for a time to be likely to defeat 
one of the largest corporations of the State. It may not be 
well to specify further in detail, but if any citizen wishes 
to look into this matter more thoroughly let him follow the 
course of some corporation petitions in 1894 ; let him read 
the statements of the counsel regarding the urgent need of 
millions of new stock at once ; let him observe the small 
amount of that stock which has actually been issued, and 
then let him judge whether another element of corporation 
discontent has not been discovered. Threats of higher taxes 
and of supervision by a State commission and of regula- 
tion of prices by the State have also to be taken into the 
account. 

Then there were other measures particularly aggravating 
to corporations, but in the interest of the public. The ever- 
present taxation question threatened to put taxes upon 
shares of foreign stocks held in this State. An act was 
passed to compel the manufacturers to furnish specifications 
to the weavers in cotton factories. The employers' liability 
act was further amended in the interest of the employees. 
Foreign corporations doing business in the State were com- 
pelled to make returns to the State authorities. Eailroads 
were compelled to block the frogs and switches in their 
yards. The gas commissioners were empowered to regulate 
the price and quality of the products of gas and electric 
light companies. Cities and towns were empowered to vote 
once a year, instead of once in three years, as the corpora- 
tions had fixed it, upon the question whether a municipality 
should buy an existing lighting plant. The new office of 
inspector of steam railroads was established in spite of the 



94 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

lobbying of the railroads, and the railroad commissioners 
were instructed to investigate into the safety of the passen- 
gers on street cars. Here was a series of acts more intoler- 
able to the corporations than was ever known before. A 
well-known corporation counsel at the State House recently 
said that the corporations would be glad if the legislature 
never met except to do their business. And another corpo- 
ration lawyer, skilled in State House practices, has declared 
that the corporations could manipulate the legislature a 
great deal better if it were elected for two years, especially 
on its second year. 

Evidence exists that one, at least, of the largest cor- 
porations of the State, which had just notoriously defied 
the laws, was actively interested in behalf of biennials. 
Considering the known hostility of corporations in general 
to the legislature, considering their exposure to petitions 
for two-cent fares, for interchangeable mileage tickets, for 
free transfers, for better protection for the passengers and 
for better service to the public, considering the many efforts 
for shorter hours of labor and for better sanitary arrange- 
ments, for more advantages compared with the employers in 
the entire realm of labor, considering the marvellous change 
in the biennial situation which occurred in the fall of 1894, 
the plausibility is so strong that it becomes a safe ground 
for action that this latest and strongest move for biennials 
is the greatest corporation log-rolling plot which was ever 
devised against the liberties of the people for their subju- 
gation to the money power. This theory will explain the 
recent course of events. Nothing which has been offered 
by the biennialists will. It is safe to believe that here is 
the most aggressive, the most insidious, and the most per- 



CORPORATIONS AND BIENNIALS. 95 

vasive attack made for a century upon the liberties of the 
people, and that the thousands of respectable names which 
have been obtained to the petitions for biennials are only 
a cloak to cover the genuine character of the movement. 
The steam-power, which is the real motive force to carry 
along the eminently honorable train of 

" right thinkin', honest folks 
Who mean to go it blind," 

who have signed the petitions for biennials with little thought 
on the question, is the wealth and influence of corporation 
men, and the fire under the boiler is the conviction that under 
the annual system the corporations may be forced into sub- 
ordination to the public good, plus the certainty that with 
biennials they will be able to manipulate and dominate the 
legislature for their own satisfaction in defiance of the public. 
Great forces only can produce great results. It is impos- 
sible to account for the legislative phenomena of 1895 and 
1896 by any ascertainable facts regarding popular interest 
in biennials. Popular interest did not roll up those im- 
mense majorities any more than Beacon Hill was scooped 
up by Indians with clamshells. Popular interest was not 
back of the singular coincidence by which biennialist news- 
papers, upon critical days in the hearing, came out, a hun- 
dred miles apart, with editorial paragraphs of exactly the 
same idea and nearly the same expression. Nothing short 
of a State-wide, mighty, pervasive influence has moulded 
the republican majorities of 1895 and 1896 to its will. 
No one who has seen a canvass of the legislature made by 
this kind of influence, with its names marked severally in 
red ink and black ink, with its signs against each name to 



96 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

indicate the shade of opinion entertained by the members 
respectively, and with further memoranda against each 
name also to show the political character of the district, 
the local magnate who " made " the member, the man who 
holds his obligations and thereby has a club over him, and 
the men who have a " pull " upon the member, can have 
any doubt as to the methods and the thoroughness with 
which the legislature has been worked in this thorough- 
going two -years' campaign to accomplish the purposes of 
the would-be bosses of Massachusetts, while seeming, 
nominally, to represent popular opinion. 

But there is another phase of the case, highly impor- 
tant to the corporations, going to show that though with 
biennials they might be saved from some annoying bills 
and might be able to manipulate the legislature more effec- 
tively, yet the very biennial scheme which they propose 
as a remedy for the hardness of their legislative lot would 
return to plague them. In every legislature it is probable 
that some members are not above putting in bills for the 
sake of drawing blackmail from the corporations. In one 
house, not many years ago, the number in a supposed 
" gang " organized for this purpose was not less than a 
dozen. With a biennial house, in which members had 
become acquainted with .each other and with their victims 
in the first term, there would be a six or seven months' 
recess, with the certainty that they would all be present at 
the next session, in which the thrifty blackmailers could 
concoct any sort of nefarious scheme with which to extort 
money from petitioners or from any one rich and exposed 
enough to invite attack. Considering the exceptional ad- 
vantages which the biennial system would offer, it is prob- 



CORPORATIONS AND BIENNIALS. 97 

able that all the gain which the corporations expect to 
make from biennials would be more than offset from this 
cause alone, of expense, annoyance, and exasperation. 

But the State, as a whole, has intense interest in the 
corporation phase of the biennial movement. If once this 
resolve is put into the constitution and the State has a 
biennial legislature, with the members out of the reach of 
the people for two years, and careless about their action 
because they know that they will not be re-elected, there 
is ample reason for the warning that all the recent corpora- 
tion legislation will be repealed, that the issue of stock and 
bonds will be left to the corporations, as in the past, that 
the new stock of extra profitable concerns will be issued at 
par, that the labor interests will cease to gain their dues 
from the legislature ; and that the power of money will 
dominate at the State House in a way in comparison with 
which the scandals of the past will seem almost the pink 
of virtue. This is the danger which threatens positively 
from biennials. Already one class of corporations, repre- 
sented by eminent counsel, has attempted to secure from the 
legislature a relaxation of State oversight established by the 
obnoxious act of 1894. Adopt biennials and the attempt 
will be multiplied with brighter assurance of success. 

Massachusetts has never had a political boss. But the 
State is yielding too much to the power of wealth. It has 
been too notorious that corporation money has swayed the 
Senate, and that corrupt men have cast aside the good of 
the public for their own private mercenary gain. Let the 
State beware how it plays straight into the hands of the 
money power by giving it a biennial legislature. Let no 
new boss of wealth be established for us in this generation. 

7 



98 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

An essential feature of the singular campaign of 1895 
and 1896 should not be permitted to escape notice, — the 
way in which the corporation interest, which is really 
superior to both parties and uses both alike for its own 
ends when necessary, has concealed itself under the cover 
of republicanism. Party lines have been drawn quite 
closely on the issue, though the republicans have not a 
vote to gain by supporting biennials, but, on the contrary, 
are quite sure to lose. But it would not do for the move- 
ment to stand in its true light, and the party which con- 
trolled more than two-thirds of the House was too valuable 
a cover not to be utilized. 

The first sign of this policy appeared in 1895. Leading 
republican members who voted against biennials in 189-4 
voted for them in 1895. A prominent republican who 
made an excellent speech for annual elections in 1894, in 
reply to the question how he came to change in 1895, said 
that strong influences had been brought to bear upon him. 
He voted for biennials in 1895 and 1896, but never gave the 
public the benefit of the causes of his conversion. In 1896 
the republican caucus committee, though there had been no 
party utterance on the subject, made a canvass of the House, 
and brought party pressure to bear to get votes for bien- 
nials. Who has been able to manage this great party of 
popular liberty and make it a stalking horse for an effort by 
wealth and political indifference to subjugate the masses to 
their ambition ? Will the average voters of this party put 
their necks willingly under the yoke because cunning man- 
agers impose upon them by appeals to party allegiance, or 
by making it appear that the democrats oppose biennials? 
If the demccrats realize what popular liberty is, shall the 
republicans permit the democrats to excel them ? 



CORPORATIONS AND BIENNIALS. 99 

Let the votes since 1890 be recalled once more to estab- 
lish another point. They were, in 1891, one hundred and 
sixteen yeas to one hundred and one nays ; in 1892, one 
hundred and twenty yeas to eighty-seven nays ; in 1893, 
ninety -three yeas to eighty-one nays ; in 1894, one hundred 
and six yeas to eighty-three nays; in 1895, one hundred 
and sixty -three yeas to fifty-seven nays. Up to 1895 the 
annual side had always secured a material proportion of 
the new republican votes. But in 1895, for some reason, 
this rule failed to hold, while in 1896, so strictly were the 
party lines drawn that only two of the new republican 
members voted against biennials, and they were from Lynn, 
where the republican sentiment is strongly on that side, 
while of the eight re-elected republicans who had voted 
against biennials in 1895 four were brought over to their 
side. How did it happen that the annual elections side 
failed, in 1895 and 1896, to get more than two of the new 
republican votes ? It cannot be by accident by any means. 
Several members who changed sides said that " the pressure 
was so great that they could not stand it. " It is the fact 
that members voted for the amendment who will oppose it 
warmly before the people, and that so many voted for it 
who were not convinced of its merit, that it would surely 
have been defeated, if only its friends had voted for it. 
Biennial elections have not yet had the approval of the 
two-thirds' vote which the Constitution requires as a pre- 
requisite of submitting an amendment to the people, and 
any argument for it based on supposed legislative sanction 
has no foundation. 

Still another factor is revealed by the figures from 1891 
to 1894, — four consecutive years, — which is highly encour- 



100 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

aging to the opponents of biennials. The corporations have 
been persistently in favor of biennials. The corporation 
lobby has been on that side. Yet, in these years, before 
they made their last desperate effort, the margin for bien- 
nials has been very small. Considering the case in this 
significant light it amounts to almost a demonstration that, 
on the merits of the case, the sober majority of the House 
would be in favor of annual elections, and all this elab- 
orate argument that the people demand biennials because a 
majority of the legislature have voted for it falls to the 
ground. Take away corporation and party pressure, and 
let the arguments pro and con. have their just weight, and 
the annual side is doubtless far the stronger among the 
representatives. If the sober judgment of the people can 
be secured, their cause is safe. It is only the corporation 
and partisan shrewdness which has put this issue into a 
presidential year which makes the friends of popular liberty 
tremble for the result. 

It is the corporations using the republican party for their 
selfish ends who have brought the present danger upon the 
State. Hence the people, as a whole, are forced to face 
more solemnly than ever the problem of subordinating 
the corporations to the popular will. The regulation of 
corporations has a very close relation to the progress of the 
State and of humanity itself. It is closely connected with 
the extreme developments of the system of competition 
which we see in these years, and with the growth of trusts, 
of monopolies, and of the enormous powers of aggregated 
capital, crushing the small holders of property between the 
competition of the giants of commerce and trade. The 
civilization of the times depends upon the degree of control 



CORPORATIONS AND BIENNIALS. 101 

which the popular will exerts over these creatures. If 
wealth continues to keep the upper hand, then the mass of 
the people become its slaves, dependent for position, occu- 
pation, and life itself, upon the pleasure of the single head 
of the aggregation. Unless the rights of the masses are 
established by the popular will, expressed in the form of 
law, then the selfish interests of wealth will hold the whips 
which will compel the toiling many to do service to the 
dominating few. Our institutions will be free only in 
name, and our country will in reality be under the iron, 
heartless rule of a selfish plutocracy, vulgar in ostenta- 
tion, and lavish of the money it has robbed from the people. 
This issue is something far broader than the question of 
voting once in a year or once in two years. It is even 
more than the prosperity of the laboring classes or the 
independence of the entire middle classes of the popula- 
tion. It is nothing short of the life of the whole body 
politic itself, with its momentous concerns for all classes, 
rich and poor, and it has in it the destiny of the future. 
It is in this light that the issue of biennial elections is to 
be approached. It is in the full view of these probabilities 
of the future that the vote of each citizen is to be cast. 
Shall the power of selfish corporate wealth, which is the 
real mainspring of all this agitation, rule supreme, or will 
the people, with jealous watchfulness over their rights and 
their sacred liberties, hold their power in their own hands, 
keep their political servants directly and closely account- 
able to them, and willingly assume, once in a year, their 
light and simple political burdens ? 



XVI. 
THE POLITICIANS AND THE LOBBY. 

One of the favorite points with the friends of biennials 
is that the amendment has been defeated in previous years 
by the efforts of the politicians and the lobbyists. This 
must be presumed to have effectiveness, for it is repeated 
frequently, and with emphasis, in different quarters. 
Hence it is well to learn the facts. It is easy to talk 
about " cheap politicians, " about men who are in politics 
for the money they can make out of it, and about corrupt 
influences which are scheming for selfish interests against 
the welfare of the people. 

But who are the politicians ? Every one who is familiar 
enough with politics to speak with any weight knows that 
the moving influences in politics are those of money and 
ambition. Men who are anxious for high office, men who 
are solicitous of legislative favor for the sake of making 
money, — these are the real politicians of the State. In a 
broad and true sense, the corporations are the politicians. 
It is they who have men in their employ throughout the 
entire year to do their political dirty work. It is they 
who hire men to travel through the State in the summer 
and early autumn, while the mass of the people are unsus- 



THE POLITICIANS AND THE LOBBY 103 

pecting, to fix up the Senate for the approaching session. 
It is the corporations who know what matters they wish 
to push through the legislature and who find it for their 
interest to see beforehand that the Senate is on their side. 
It is the men of wealth who can afford to spend money 
freely for their election who are the real manipulators in 
politics, in company with the corporations who are seeking 
to strengthen their grip upon the public in order that they 
may hold the public subservient to their uses. It is the 
rich men who debauch politics by the money they put into 
it. One of the petitioners for biennials testified, at the 
hearing in 1896, that the free distribution of beer in his 
city, in a campaign between two rich men who were respec- 
tively trying to buy their way into Congress, was a public 
scandal. It is these politicians who corrupt the legisla- 
ture. There cannot be the bribed without the bribers. It 
is the heads of rich corporations, men who stand well in 
society and in religious circles, who have been primarily 
responsible for the scandals which have disgraced the 
State House. They have come up to Beacon Hill, rotten 
with money, flanked by their high-priced counsel in long 
array, heralded by columns upon columns of paid reading 
matter in the papers which the unsophisticated readers 
have supposed to be inserted on its merits among the news 
of the day. These corporations are responsible for whatever 
bribery has occurred in the legislature or in the precincts 
of Boston's City Hall. Yet it is these corporations, it is 
these rich men more than any other influence, who are at 
the bottom of the movement for biennial elections, and the 
adoption of the amendment by the people would be a great 
triumph for them in keeping the masses under their 



104 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

thumbs, and in promoting their'ability to manipulate legis- 
lation at their will. 

Now, once more, as to the lobby. It is sought to smirch 
the cause of annual elections by representing it as depen- 
dent upon the lobby, with all the discredit which can be 
made to attach to the name. But the truth is that the pro- 
fessional lobbyists are in favor of biennials. They are the 
creatures of the corporations, and what the corporations 
want they will bend their energies to secure. Count them 
over, one by one. Call the roll of them, name by name. 
They are two to one in favor of biennials. Worse still, it 
is the lobbyists of most influence, who can travel about 
the State, are employed throughout the year by large cor- 
porations, have long experience in politics, and have 
the reputation of " landing their men, " who are for bien- 
nials, while the other side is represented in this profession 
by those who, to use the graphic words of the sergeant- 
at-arms, " have to get along on crackers and cheese till 
February, " and oppose the amendment in their feeble and 
ineffective way. One of the most effective corporation 
lobbyists has expressed his gladness at the passage of the 
amendment by the legislature, while another, representing 
an aggregation of many millions of capital, has given his 
personal support to the amendment, and added. " Our people 
are in favor of it. " Whatever discredit attaches to the 
influence of the politicians and of the lobby belongs, right- 
fully, on the side of biennials. Yet those who profit by it, 
recognizing the bad company in which they would appear 
if the truth were realized, try to throw the disgrace upon 
their opponents, while themselves profiting by the work of 
lobbyists and politicians. It is a very ancient trick for a 



THE POLITICIANS AND THE LOBBY. 105 

criminal who fears arrest to join in the cry of " Stop 
thief. " 

No, instead of the charge being true, that the politicians 
and the lobby are on the side of annual elections, they are 
distinctly opposed to annuals, and the people are struggling 
against these insidious and powerful workers. Let those 
who benefit by such work at least have the decency to 
acknowledge their allies. 

But, it may be said, there is a large class of men of 
small means and mediocre ability who are busy in politics, 
who are neither the creatures of the corporations nor in the 
professional lobby, who are in favor of annual elections, 
and it is these creatures who thwart the will of the right- 
minded, public-spirited citizens who wish to do away with 
the turmoil of continual political agitation. But again the 
critic of annual elections is wrong. Let him talk with 
these politicians, learn their real feelings, not what they 
offer for public consumption, and he will find that they are 
for biennials. They tell their reasons, too. After cam- 
paigns are over there are the old bills to clean up. There 
is the ward machinery to keep in order. There are the 
hundreds of precinct voters to be looked after. More than 
this, there is the risk of an annual election. When they 
are once elected they would like to have it for two years. 
It would save them much worry and expense. If they 
could have their way, they would have biennial elections. 
This is what they say when they reveal their real wishes. 
But very little pretext can be found for saying that it is 
the politicians and lobby who want frequent elections. It 
is the mass of the people who need them, and they are 
struggling for their rights not only in the face of the corpo- 



106 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

rations and of consolidated wealth, but against the secret 
plotting of politicians who care nothing for the people, pro- 
vided they themselves can hold office. But this is only 
one phase of the constant struggle for popular liberty under 
a democratic government. It is always the people against 
the politicians. 



XVII. 
THE ISSUE NOT UNDERSTOOD. 

Through all of this recent onset in behalf of biennials 
has been urged the demand that the legislature submit the 
question to the people. In the press and at the hearings 
it has been repeatedly asserted that the issue has been 
thoroughly discussed for twenty years, and that it is absurd 
to suppose that the people are not ready to vote upon the 
question. Does any man presume, it is asked, to stand up 
and say that the people are not thoroughly intelligent upon 
the question, and that they are not ready to give their final 
judgment ? 

If the discussion in the press had been broad enough to 
cover the ground, if the petitioners at the hearings had 
acknowledged the existence of the controlling reasons 
against biennials, if the people had shown that they at 
least knew of the reasons against biennials, but thought that 
the counterbalancing reasons were more weighty, it would 
be impertinent and conceited to affirm that the people are 
not sufficiently informed upon the subject. But, since the 
newspaper treatment of the question for a long time, as far 
as has been observed with watchful attention to their utter- 
ances, has not consisted of reasoning, but of denunciation, 



108 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

of ridicule, and of misstatements of the worth of legislation 
and of the character of the opponents of biennials, the value 
of the education conducted by the press is of very little 
account. Since the petitioners, at none of the hearings, 
have alluded to the controlling reasons for annual elec- 
tions, but have confined their criticisms to some compara- 
tively unimportant evils of the present system, it is only 
fair for the remonstrants against biennials to maintain that 
the hearings, as far as the petitioners' contributions are 
concerned, have not added to the popular information on 
the subject. It is also pertinent to affirm that the discus- 
sions of the question in the legislature have been of very 
little educational value. It is one of the evils even under 
our system of annual sessions, with the growing amount 
of business to be transacted, that debate has deteriorated 
markedly in quality. On this matter especially, with a 
majority of the House hostile to annual elections, there has 
been a disposition to shut off debate. Speeches have been 
limited to ten or five minutes each, and at the beginning 
of the afternoon an hour has been fixed later in the same 
day for taking the vote. It has been assumed that this is 
an old matter upon which nothing new could be said, and 
that it would be good policy, at least, to have the vote 
taken as soon as possible. The fact that in 1896 the bien- 
nial cat played with the helpless little annual mouse, and 
let it squeak all it wanted, does not overthrow the practice 
of previous years. Still further, since the two-thirds' vote 
has been necessary for only the final stage of the debate, 
by common consent the resolve has been ordered to a third 
reading without discussion, until 1896, and the debate 
concentrated on the final stage only. Hence there has 



THE ISSUE NOT UNDERSTOOD. 109 

been but one opportunity, practically, for discussing the 
question. 

Now, it is impossible, in broken, interrupted speeches of 
five or ten minutes each, to«discuss a great constitutional 
question like this thoroughly. As far as presentation of 
argument is concerned, the debates have been little better 
than farces. Members repeat each other. No effort has 
been made to cover the ground. In any event, the cer- 
tainty that the debate would not change votes has over- 
shadowed the hours from the call of the calendar till the 
end of the roll-call. 

A further test of the popular understanding of the ques- 
tion is by personal inquiry. This test, applied to a large 
number of cases, has been remarkably uniform in finding 
that not even our supposedly intelligent citizens have any 
adequate conception of the interests at stake. The case for 
biennials lies in the popular mind much like this : " We 
have too many elections now ; we are sick of politics ; there 
is too much stir every year ; there is too much money spent ; 
there is so much rascality in elections that it ought to be 
stopped. We will put an end to it as much as possible. 
Give us biennial elections. " This is practically the whole 
of the case for biennial elections as it lies in the average 
citizen's mind. Not a hint is found of the great concerns 
of government at stake. Scarcely a man has apparently the 
slightest realization of the magnitude of popular interests 
involved. Not a man, with rare exceptions, has any per- 
sonal familiarity with the need of close attention to the 
needs of the people and of constant watchfulness to keep 
corrupt men out of office, and to be sure that the interests 
of the public are not betrayed. As the matter lies in the 



110 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

public mind, the apprehension of it is shamefully super- 
ficial, and though it may not be complimentary to the 
people to affirm that they do not understand the question, 
yet, after careful study of the % case, such affirmation is here 
made most emphatically, with all due modesty. 

Will the men who are in favor of biennial elections be- 
cause they are sick of so much politics show why their 
sickness is any reason for giving less attention to the 
needs of the State ? Are we not, all of us, far more sick of 
the daily round of toil than we are of our yearly elections ? 
Are we not more wearied in bearing the money-burden of 
daily support than the trifle which we pay for our share of 
campaign and election expenses ? It requires nearly all the 
time, thought, and strength of most workers to provide a 
living for themselves and for those dependent upon them. 
Ambition to rise in wealth, to heap up a larger pile, to 
strengthen the defences against want and old age, impel 
many men to work as eagerly for more money as if they 
had not enough for the bare necessities. Private concerns 
demand imperatively most of the effort of nearly all the 
people. 

But if the little concern of one's personal fortune is so 
severe a tax upon the average man's strength, if all the 
wit in his brains is called in play just to enable him to hold 
his own in the struggle of life and to lay up enough ahead 
to secure him a decent burial, how severe must be the legit- 
imate demand of the great organic state as a whole ! Upon 
its safe administration depends the prosperity of all its 
minor parts. If the personal affairs of the individuals 
absorb them so completely, is it not reasonable that the 
greater needs of the State should have attention for at least 



THE ISSUE NOT UNDEKSTOOD. Ill 

an hour on one day in the year, plus what daily reading is 
needed for forming an intelligent opinion ? "What citizen is 
there who studies the needs of the State with that keenness 
and intensity which he concentrates upon his personal affairs? 
Who is so absorbed in the good of the body politic as in 
his own private concerns ? Who is so quick to seize an 
opportunity to promote the public good as he is to make 
a dollar for himself ? Who is there studying the lines of 
growth in the State, its courts and executive departments, 
its commissions and their enlarging spheres, its schools, its 
health, its roads, its protection for the poor, its metropolitan 
development, the relation of the crowded centres to the 
thinly populated regions, the thousand avenues of progress 
already open before it, — who is studying these vital concerns 
in their relation to the growth of the State as a whole, with 
that sagacity and concentration of effort which he puts into 
his management of his personal estate ? Our business men 
are praised for their shrewdness, their industry, and their 
wonderful trained ability. Is the State, for its own sake, 
receiving the unselfish service of a solitary one of thpse 
hundreds of masters in affairs ? The State has need of 
them. Their private prosperity depends upon stable and pure 
government. The State can enjoy peace and healthful 
growth only as justice is established between individuals and 
between classes. Yet these men continue to be absorbed 
in the fierce struggle of suicidal competition and in the for- 
mation of monopolistic trusts, when the same intelligence 
and energy which is absorbed in private contests and 
anxieties, if devoted to the State as a whole, might bring 
about sooner the next stage in development which is to 
succeed a discredited system of business competition, and 



112 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

might hasten the establishment of a higher degree of justice 
between individuals and between classes. 

With these possibilities, with these duties, men yet say 
that they are sick of politics, and prefer to neglect the great 
needs of the State to plunge deeper into the risks and losses 
and anxieties of business conflicts. The greater must have 
attention at the expense of the less, or the derangement of 
the greater will bring added vexation and weariness to the 
selfish men who hope to save their little fortunes at the 
cost of loss to the extended whole. It is an inverted and 
mischievous view which sees the need of thought and labor 
for private affairs and does not see a higher need for the 
State. 



XVIII. 

WHAT IS THE GAIN? 

Aftee all, if biennial elections should be adopted by the 
people, what would they gain ? They would be rid of the 
disturbance and annoyance of an election in every second 
year, and that is the one stimulus above all others for the 
average citizen to vote for biennials. But this off-year 
election costs the average citizen very little time, thought, 
or money, — not as much as he should be willing to spend 
for the good of the State. He gives an inappreciable amount 
of time. His tax bills would feel no lighter if the election 
expense were removed, so light is that portion already. As 
to campaign expenses, the average citizen gives little or 
nothing now. It is the few heavy subscribers who are ur- 
ging biennial campaigns. The disturbance of business has 
never been reduced to an expressible amount by any bien- 
nialist, and never can be so as to make any worthy com- 
parison with the good of an annual election. Suppose that 
the signers for biennials were to get all they ask for in 
their petition, and suppose that there were no losses to 
offset on the other side, the gain would be so infinitesimal 
that at the end of the year the citizens would perceive no 
larger total in their possession, either of comfort, happiness, 
or prosperity. The entire stake on that side is ridiculously 
small, even taking it at the valuation of the petitioners. 



114 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

But against this petty gain at the most there must be 
offset great and inevitable losses, — loss of political expert - 
ness and soundness of judgment by the entire people, loss 
of opportunity to attend properly to the constant and imper- 
ative demands of the political body, loss of labor to advance 
in the struggle for the good things of life, loss of capital 
for a free opportunity of improving natural enlargements 
of investment, and for escape from the fetters of mighty 
combinations, loss of political independence on the part of 
men who will fall under the domination of party bosses, 
loss of a degree of intelligent and honest legislation, loss 
of power on the part of the entire rural population of the 
State, loss of opportunity for the people to hold their repre- 
sentatives responsible to them frequently, loss of the force 
of democratic institutions, loss of the growing equality 
between class and class, loss in a thousand ways affecting, 
vitally, the growth and prosperity of the political body and 
of every person who is a constituent atom of it. 

Comparing the infinitesimal gain with the serious, per- 
vasive, and permanent loss, what voter in the State can be 
so blind as to choose the gain with the certainty of suffering 
the loss ? 



XIX. 

BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE 

SESSIONS. 

• [The following article was printed in the Xew England Magazine 
for April, 1893. Repeated requests have been made for its republica- 
tion, and accordingly, by permission, it is reproduced here, with the 
statistics brought down to date. The biennial problem is treated in 
it in a logical order which was not possible in the preceding chapters, 
for this problem is to be considered first of all in its relation to the 
legislature. That is far above the question of the executive depart- 
ment. The leading biennialists want biennial sessions as well as 
biennial elections. But the facts establish clearly the imperative 
necessity for annual sessions. These facts have been denied. They 
have been severely ridiculed. But they stand, regiments of them, 
needing no defence except attention to their existence and their 
character. The ridicule rests solely upon ignorance, and cannot for a 
moment bear the light. Having established the need of annual 
sessions, then comes the question whether annual or biennial elec- 
tions will best serve the people. The weight of argument is here held 
to be overwhelmingly in favor of annual elections, and in the settle- 
ment of the broad problem it is to be reinforced by the other reasons 
which do not bear directly upon the legislature.] 

Much interest is felt in Massachusetts and in other States 
in the question of biennial State elections and biennial ses- 
sions of the legislature. Many people would have both 
kinds of biennials. Others would have biennial State elec- 
tions, but do not think it would be wise to hold a legisla- 
tive session as infrequently as once in two years. I believe 



116 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

that Loth of the proposed changes — in many States they are 
of course effected changes — -would be unwise and would 
work to the serious injury of the State. Having once 
thought otherwise, and having been compelled, in candor, 
to change my view because of increased familiarity with 
facts as they are to be observed at the State House and in 
State politics, having also had better facilities for observa- 
tion than, most people, it may be pertinent to set forth the 
reasons for my conclusions. It will help to a clear idea 
of the situation to take up first the question of biennial 
sessions of the legislature. 

Biennial Sessions. 

The demand for biennial sessions is based on the belief 
that the legislature spends much time foolishly, that the 
sessions are needlessly long and expensive, that it is unwise 
to keep up a constant tinkering of the laws, that the busi- 
ness people do not want the laws disturbed so often, that 
the lawyers protest against the constant revision, and the 
common people cannot keep up with the new legislation, 
that many " cranky " matters are introduced, and, in short, 
that the needs of the State for new laws would be amply 
served by a session once in two years, to the great relief of 
the popular mind from apprehension of the evil which an 
ignorant and shameless legislature may do, and to the saving 
of the popular pocket of the large expense of their objec- 
tionable proceedings. 

Beyond dispute, there is need of reform in legislative 
methods. Some of the popular criticism is richly deserved. 
But to attempt reform by introducing biennial sessions 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 117 

would only aggravate directly some of the evils whose 
remedy is sought, and would, as I think can be conclu- 
sively shown, introduce other and greater ones. It must 
ever be remembered by the reformers that in a government 
by the people the ideal of excellence which the critics can 
see in contrast to reality can never be attained till the 
people are in a higher stage of development than at present. 
Popular government must ever reflect popular life and the 
morals and customs of the times. If there is a popular 
eagerness for wealth, the public treasury is sure to be ex- 
posed to the plunderings of dishonest contractors, and the 
halls of legislation are certain to be infested by men who 
procure their elections for the sake of increasing their 
material substance by selling their vctes. If ambition for 
office at the hands of the people be prevalent, then men are 
always to be found in the legislature whose qualification is 
their anxiety to seem distinguished among their fellows, 
not their fitness to make laws for the people. Ambition 
and desire of wealth are strong and almost universal motives 
in men of this generation, and so the legislature will be 
under their curse. It is not for the legislative reformers to 
be discouraged, even if the evils from them crop up con- 
tinually, nor to coase their efforts, nor to imagine that it 
will be any remedy to reduce the legitimate demand of the 
people for legislation. 

It is natural that most people should believe that there is 
too much legislation. Each individual has few needs in 
this respect. He seldom goes to the legislature for its aid. 
In fact, most of the people never go at all. To them it 
is a waste of time and of money to hold annual sessions. 
Especially is this true of the rural districts. The majority 



118 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

of the country people would probably be perfectly recon- 
ciled to sessions less frequent than once in two years. 
They are not constantly in large cities. They do not feel 
the force of the current of the times. But the most active 
life of the people is where the population is most dense, 
where there are the greatest accumulations of property, 
where there are many interests to be affected by legisla- 
tion, where enterprise is most vigorous, where thought is 
the most active, and where there is the most energetic push- 
ing forward into the unseen but supposedly profitable future. 
It is a fact, that the cities and large towns bring more and 
more legislation to the State House every year. Their wants 
are more complex than those of the small towns. The issues 
which have not been foreseen by the legislators of the past 
are more numerous. It is every year more evident that the 
safe rule for the growth of the State is to have frequent 
opportunities for adjustment, for frequent adaptation of the 
laws to the rapidly developing needs of the times. 

If there were soundness in the argument for biennial 
sessions on the ground of too much legislation, then the 
tendency of the times would be in that direction. But the 
history of Massachusetts, at least in recent years, proves, 
beyond question, that the necessary course is not in less 
frequent attention to the needs of the State, but rather in 
more faithful watchfulness over them. It must be remem- 
bered that legislation is not an entertainment, nor a diver- 
sion, nor a free treat, nor anything but the most serious 
business for those who ask for it, — save for some few pro- 
fessional agitators, and even they have their standing only 
because there are serious evils to the people they represent 
which need legislative action for their reform. 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 119 

These people who come to the State House on serious 
business do not come with any more alacrity than people go 
to law about other matters. Their attendance at the legis- 
lature takes them from their usual business, which is a 
money loss to them. Expenses of time, hotels, railroad 
travel, printing, lawyers' fees, and so on, must be incurred, 
which are often large, and which are always an obstacle to 
seeking legislation. If it were not for the expense of get- 
ting laws passed, many more people would doubtless be 
at the State House for new changes and adjustments in the 
social and business order. Circumstances conspire to pre- 
vent people from petitioning for desired legislation. There 
is the uncertainty of favorable action, which is in itself a 
deterrent from agitation. There is the mysterious lobby to 
be dealt with, to encounter which the inexperienced man 
fears will cost him more than he can afford to pay. There 
is the inherent disposition to bear the ills we have rather 
than to fly to those we know not of. So nothing but the 
urgency of his needs will bring the average petitioner to the 
State House. 

Yet, in the face of this fact, and in spite of the prolonged 
and active effort for biennials by leading men of both par- 
ties and by many of the rank and file, by the leading repub- 
lican press, by the ablest representatives of the independent 
press and by the country press generally, the demand for 
legislation in Massachusetts constantly increases. No one 
would have it if he could help it. Every one, as a rule, 
shrinks from it. Popular demand is asserted to be on the 
side of less frequent sessions. As far as can be judged, the 
result of the will of man would be to reduce the number of 
sessions and the quantity of legislation. Yet, in the face 



120 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

of this fact, I say, legislation grows in quantity and the 
future has no prospect of any diminution. 

This is nothing else than the demonstration, by the vital 
force of the community itself, that the demand for biennial 
sessions is an error. It is philosophically wrong, because it 
would cramp and retard the well-rounded development of 
the State. It would continue present inequalities in the 
relation of different classes to each other. It would tend 
to pull back the Commonwealth from its pre-eminence 
among the States, and it would nullify, in part, the promise 
it has, in its frequent attention to matters of popular con- 
cern, that it will lead the nation in the speedy establish- 
ment of justice and in the well-proportioned development 
of all classes of society. Advocates of biennials cannot 
deny the fact (for it has actually occurred during their agi- 
tation) that the more they have talked and written for 
biennials, the stronger has been the demonstration in the 
very organic life of the people that there is urgent necessity 
for frequent legislation for the well-being of the State, and 
that anything which interrupts it is an obstacle in the 
normal progress of the community as a whole. How, then, 
can they justify their position and assert that to be a benefit 
and a necessity which the Commonwealth as a whole 
continually pronounces an injury and a menace to her 
harmonious and natural growth ? 

The acts of the legislature themselves are witness to the 
need of legislation, unless it be maintained that our govern' 
ment itself is largely foolishness. In recent years the Blue 
Book has grown rapidly in volume. For a long time its 
pages have been of the same size, and hence comparisons of 
years by pages are just. In 1859 there was an unusually 






BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 121 

large amount of legislation for the ante-bellum period. 
The laws and resolves in the Blue Book edition filled 472 
pages. Then they fell in amount for several years ; then 
rose and fell and rose again till the six months' session of 
1874, with its laborious and voluminous enlargement and 
codification of the railroad law, resulted in a Blue Book of 
493 pages. Then the volume of legislation, in the stagna- 
tion and severe business distress which followed the green- 
back catastrophe of 1874, fell off rapidly. In 1878 the 
pages were 320 in number; in 1879, the retrenchment year, 
277; in 1880, 262; in 1881, 328; in 1882, 258; in 1883, 
298; in 1884, 400; in 1885, 434; in 1886, 396; in 1887, 
603; in 1888, 572; in 1889, 497; in 1890, 570; in 1891, 
463; in 1892, 592; in 1893, 807; in 1894, 829; in 1895, 
710. Here is a vast increase in business in recent years. 
It is a proof that legislation was demanded by the people, 
and that the work of the legislature was essential to the safe 
and rapid development of the State, unless the champion of 
biennial sessions is ready to argue that the people would 
incur all the expense it involved solely from an unreason- 
able itching for unnecessary legislation; that they would 
put themselves foolishly to the exertion which is unavoid- 
able in the preparation and prosecution of cases before the 
legislature, that they would incur the expense of repeated 
travel and hotel bills in going to Boston, that they would 
spend days at the State House and hire some one in the 
much advertised lobby to watch their matters for them, and 
they would pay money to lawyers to fight their cases for 
them, and that they would lose their time from their busi- 
ness, all for the sake of passing some whimsical bill through 
the legislature. When men put out time, money, and 



122 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

strength for no apparent object, when this outlay is made 
carelessly, when it is not a very serious business which is 
taken up only with reluctance and because they are forced 
into it, then, and not until then, will there be any sound- 
ness in the argument for biennial sessions that most of the 
legislation enacted is unnecessary. The truth is that the 
people would keep away from the State House if they 
could. The fact that people talk for biennials shows what 
they would do, if they had the power, when their personal 
interests are not involved. The other fact, that people 
bring enough business to the legislature for a long annual 
session, shows how they practise their theories. They 
want biennials, but they must have annuals. 

A common charge is that the subjects of legislation are 
the same old questions over and over again, that they are 
ridiculous in idea, that they are nothing but a tinkering of 
old laws, and that they are special matters which ought to 
be treated under general laws. But these objections cannot 
have weight with those who understand the facts ; they 
have no sufficient basis of fact to rest upon, and they would 
not be advanced if the objectors would be at the trouble to 
inform themselves upon the facts. The impression that old 
questions form the main business of the legislature, year 
after year, rests on the very narrow basis of a few such 
matters as woman suffrage and biennials. Taking out these 
and the questions which require an agitation of two or three 
years for their settlement, but which mark a real develop- 
ment, there is nothing of consequence left as a basis for the 
charge that each legislature merely works over the old 
business of its predecessor. There is now only one " hardy 
annual " at the State House, except biennials, and that is 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 123 

woman suffrage. Weekly payments, shorter hours of labor, 
employers' liability, State arbitration, school superinten- 
dence by districts, free text-books, the abolition of the poll 
tax as a suffrage qualification, and other advance move- 
ments which have encountered serious obstacles have finally 
achieved success. Woman suffrage only stands just where 
it did twenty years ago. 

It is worth while to notice for a moment the belief of the 
opponents of annual sessions, that much of the legislative 
business is mere " rubbish. " In the first place, there is the 
interesting fact to notice, that this " rubbish " — to include 
under that head matters which do not commend themselves 
to the judgment of the legislature as a whole — is just as 
likely to come from the supposedly more intelligent classes 
of the community as from the less intelligent. Conspicuous 
as a matter which struggles yearly for recognition, yet which 
the legislature continues to reject by large majorities, and 
which many members are impatient with as the merest 
" rubbish, " is woman suffrage. But this u rubbish " has the 
support of Henry L. Dawes, George F. Hoar, and distin- 
guished men and women of the State in number sufficient 
to prove that the success of a petition before the legislature 
is not the only indication of the intellectual calibre or 
general good sense of the petitioners. For years, until dis- 
couraged by the hopelessness of the task, did Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson and others of his way of thinking try, in 
vain, to procure a repeal of the law which establishes a pre- 
sumption against an atheist as a witness in court. News- 
paper publishers have tried to secure a change in the law of 
libel, but in vain. Yet the late Col. W. W. Clapp, John 
H. Holmes, Samuel Bowles, John S. Baldwin, John C. 



124 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

Milne and others do not believe that their petition was 
" rubbish " because they could not convince the judiciary 
committee of the soundness of their views. They aban- 
doned their reform early. Had they pressed it in earnest it 
might have become law, and thus their " rubbish " would 
have been transformed in the eyes of the people into that 
good sense which they had no doubt it was, in fact. In 
the esteem of the great corporations, the demands for an 
employers' liability law and for weekly payments of wages 
were at first " rubbish, " and as " rubbish " they were treated 
by successive legislatures. Years of earnest agitation were 
needed to give them standing in the Great and General 
Court. Yet those years were a period of growth, of natural 
development in the State, and what was at first believed to 
be " rubbish " was found to be not only good sense, but a 
positive benefit to a large class of people. 

It is generally supposed that the farmers, as a class, have 
as much solid sense as any people in the State ; but what 
sometimes seems good sense to them seems ridiculous to 
people of other professions. The farmers would legislate 
against woodchucks, but the lawyers laugh them out of the 
House. It may be granted that some ideas presented are 
ridiculous to all members except to those who introduce 
them, but the proportion of such is really too small for 
serious consideration compared with the genuine interests 
involved. The charge of " rubbish " cannot lie against legis- 
lative business to any material extent. Proposals which 
would be reasonable if adopted only where the petitioners 
live cannot be applied everywhere. Such proposals are 
presented from local interests all over the State, but fail to 
commend themselves to the judgment of the legislature as 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 125 

a whole, representing the general interest. That it is inex- 
pedient to legislate upon many matters presented is no proof 
that the idea is not sensible, nor that it would be inex- 
pedient were the conditions general which caused the pre- 
sentation of the idea. These matters usually take but little 
time, and the argument for biennials can get no material 
strength from them. The more extreme proposals which 
are generally pronounced ridiculous are too few, and take 
too little time to be worthy of notice. 

It is urged that there is too much special legislation; 
that general laws ought to be passed which would obviate 
the need of special laws. Certainly, but the criticism is 
half-blind. It is a fact that the rules of the legislature 
require a general bill to be reported on any petition for a 
special act where it is possible to apply a general one. It 
is a fact that this rule is observed as closely as possible. 
But the criticism fails to perceive that special acts must 
often precede general acts. For a long time there was a 
fruitless, but honest and persistent endeavor to draft a 
general water-supply act which should remove the need of 
a charter for every new company. It was years, in spite 
of repeated efforts, before a general law could be passed for 
safe deposit, loan, and trust companies, and in these years 
many special charters were issued. City charters were of 
necessity at first special, in the divergence of local circum- 
stances and in the lack of experience in city administration. 
These are illustrations of many facts. Special acts are the 
pioneers in the growth of the State. They are inevitable in 
the advance into a new field or upon a higher plane. As 
instances multiply, generalizations are made from the 
different experiences, and so general laws become possible. 



126 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

But until a new race of statesmen is bred, special acts will, 
as a rule, precede general. As fast as possible special acts 
are made general, and to clamor for the latter before their 
time is useless. It is only when the generalization from 
special acts is not prompt that there is good ground for 
complaint. But special acts which mark a State-growth 
in a new line-require time for discussion, both to be wise 
in themselves, and to set a wise precedent for coming 
general acts. This time is found much better in annual 
sessions than would be possible in biennials. 

Much help in considering the business of the Great and 
General Court can be obtained from a study of the business 
of other courts in the State. If we begin in 1866, with the 
epoch following the civil war, we find that constant growth 
has marked the history of our system of courts. Enlarge- 
ment, not contraction, is the rule, as would have been 
expected in. a thriving commonwealth where the population 
is increasing rapidly. The index of the Blue Book shows 
that changes have occurred in the courts by legislative 
action every year since 1866. Something new has been 
required every year to enable the system to meet the de- 
mands upon it. 

Now people do not go to law for the pleasure of it. Pay- 
ments of lawyers' fees and court expenses is not an entice- 
ment to engage in litigation. Yet the people have every 
year put more and more business upon all their courts. 
The lower courts have been multiplied, the upper courts 
have been relieved from entire classes of business, and the 
number of their judges has been increased. All this has been 
necessary in the normal growth of the Commonwealth and of 
the people's business before the courts. Six sessions of the 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 127 

Superior Court sit at the same time for Suffolk County 
alone, — a result of the rapid growth of business in recent 
years. 

Passing over the creation of district courts (which is not 
yet ended), and the enlargement of their jurisdiction, their 
increases of salaries, their equipment with clerks and their 
multiplication of cases, we find that in the Superior and 
Supreme Courts changes have occurred, due, solely, to the in- 
crease of business. All the tendency of the times has been 
to throw more work upon the courts. In 1873 the number of 
associate justices of the Supreme Judicial Court was raised 
from five to six. In 1875 the associate justices of the Su- 
perior Court were made to number ten instead of nine. In 
1886 the number was raised to eleven, and so inadequate was 
this advance that in 1888 two more were added, making 
thirteen. In 1883 jurisdiction in equity cases was given to 
the Superior Court for the sake of relieving the Supreme 
Court. In 1885, in order to spare the justices of the Supreme 
Court from hard labor in their old age, and in order to per- 
mit them to retire to make room for younger men, who could 
more rapidly dispatch their accumulated business, the law 
was passed for the retirement of the justices upon a pension. 
In 1887, after a stubborn contest for years, the law was 
passed to give the Superior Court jurisdiction in divorce 
cases. This was solely for the relief of the overworked 
Supreme Court, though the argument that the sanctity of 
the marriage tie demanded that all such cases be considered 
by the highest court in the State had hitherto prevented the 
change. The practice of retiring judges upon pensions was 
applied to the Superior Court also in the same year. In 
1891 the further pressure of business upon the Supreme 



128 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

Court overpowered the hitherto potent argument that cases 
involving human life should be tried by the highest court 
of the State, and the Superior Court was given exclusive 
jurisdiction in capital cases. In 1892 the number of jus- 
tices of the Superior Court was raised from thirteen to fif- 
teen. A bill to increase the number of justices from fifteen 
to seventeen was reported unanimously by the House judi- 
ciary committee on March 31, 1896. Every recent year has 
seen enlargements, new clerks, new assistants, more money 
paid in salaries, new duties and improved methods. 

New necessities have broken down old practices, as the 
swelling trunk of a vigorous tree breaks the old bark and 
enlarges itself to true porportions for its own life. All 
through the system of courts is evident this enlargement of 
business, which necessitates increased time and expense, yet 
which is inevitable in the growth of the Commonwealth. 

As it is with the courts in the State, from the supreme 
to the lowest, so it is with the Great and General Court. 
The pressure which is felt at every county seat is felt, most 
of all, at the State House. Viewed in its true light, this 
one aspect of the case is conclusive against biennial sessions 
of the legislature. In its normal growth the Commonwealth 
shows us courts multiplying, business increasing, justices 
made more numerous, salaries raised with enlarged business, 
more assistants provided, — and all this in a healthful con- 
dition of the body politic. Yet in the case of the people's 
court, the one place where they can come for redress of 
grievances, the sole opportunity they have for bettering 
their legal standing in relation to their fellows, the court 
which must adjust business methods to modern facts, the 
court which must find a place for numerous inventions 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 129 

which continually change the relations of property to itself 
and of persons to it, the court which makes the laws which 
control the other courts which try these constantly mul- 
tiplying cases, it is proposed to cut down the number of 
sessions by one-half, and into that half to crowd the accu- 
mulations of two years, and to tell the people to make the best 
of it they can. The proposition is ridiculous, and it only 
needs this comparison with the other court business to show 
how little real attention can have been given to the matter 
by the friends of biennial sessions. The opponents of bien- 
nials, presenting their argument on this one ground, and mak- 
ing it clear to the people, might afford to rest their case with 
it alone, for no population of intelligence could see, clearly, 
the facts and then vote to reduce to biennial sessions its op- 
portunities for prompt and proper transaction of its business. 
Further light on this phase of the -question is given by 
the course of business in city councils, where the people are 
governed by repesentatives, as they are in the State govern- 
ment. It is the custom, in all the cities of the State, for the 
aldermen and common council to meet frequently. Their 
sessions are not continuous, as are the sessions of the legis- 
lature, day after day, and month after month, but they are 
not omitted for any considerable time except during the 
heat of summer, when many of the people served are away, 
That is, there is so much public business arising in every 
city that meetings of the city government must be held 
frequently in order that it' may be acted upon promptly and 
when the interests concerned demand it. One would be 
foolish who should say that even once in six months was 
often enough for a city council to meet. Yet the legisla- 
ture must do the business of the thirty-two cities of the 

9 



130 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

Commonwealth in their relations with the enlarging circle 
of development which requires constant readjustment, and 
must act also for the three hundred and twenty -six towns. 

Because there is need of frequent legislation, it is not 
necessary to show that it is of exciting constitutional or 
historical importance. Neither States nor men grow by 
leaps and bounds. The boy who is on his way to robust 
manhood is not appreciably taller to-day than he was yes- 
terday, but he is hungry for three meals a day ; it would 
inconvenience him and injure him to omit any one of them, 
and no one has yet proposed a biennial plan for boys, and 
advised that they eat only once in two days. Unifor^n and 
healthy growth is promoted by that legislation which satis- 
fies the seemingly commonplace needs of the people just as 
it is a commonplace matter to provide daily meals ; but the 
aggregate of the growth is not commonplace, and the highest 
aggregate is reached by preventing any loss of growth. 
Because some legislation does not appear to be critical, it 
does not follow that it is not important, nor that the State 
would be just as well off without it. 

A fact which may be briefly stated should not be over- 
looked in the proofs that annual sessions are for the good of 
the people. It is that in every year cases arise frequently 
in which the legislative rules are suspended in order that a 
bill may be put at once upon its passage. Even granting 
that this may be needless in some instances when it occurs, 
the fact remains that there is often occasion, even while 
the legislature is sitting, for its prompt action in behalf of 
some interest which cannot wait without injury for the 
ordinary course of legislation. That is, the current of 
human affairs is flowing ceaselessly on, and, as would be 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 131 

expected in a natural course, cases of immediate need are 
frequently occurring. 

No consideration of biennials would be complete without 
attention to the vastness and diversity of the interests in- 
volved. Probably no one comprehends, as to quantity alone, 
the work of the legislature at one session. The clerks 
know that the mere record of matters entered by title is 
voluminous. The members of the several committees know 
something of what is before them, but they have little 
idea of what is before other committees. The Blue Book, 
at the end of the session, shows what has been enacted, but 
it has no hint of what has been rejected ; and the Blue 
Book alone is proof of much work done. Great and complex 
interests are under treatment at the same time. Matters 
are under hearing before committees which, if brought 
forward under other circumstances, would be thought worthy 
of much space in the newspapers and in popular thought ; 
but as it is, they must be dismissed with brief mention or 
none at all. Only a small part of the significance of bills 
is revealed in the Senate and House. If there is opposi- 
tion, then the facts are brought out to a greater or less 
degree. But if there is not, the members trust the com- 
mittee's judgment, and their reports usually pass unchal- 
lenged. The legislative machine is too complex, and the 
mass of business is too great for any one member to know 
thoroughly about more than a very small part of it. It is 
easy to sneer at the mass, but sneers are based upon igno- 
rance. Eeally, only a small proportion of the petitions 
and orders are offered by persons whose good sense would 
be questioned, or who can be suspected of attempting black- 
mail upon wealthy persons or corporations. To certain 



182 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

persons of good sense nearly every matter of proposed legis- 
lation seems advisable. As long as we have government by 
the people, it is inevitable that many such matters should 
be introduced which, to the collective sense of a committee, 
or to a broader information, seem inexpedient. But it is 
no remedy for this fact in legislation to throw all such 
schemes upon an inexperienced legislature in twice the 
mass of the present. It is inevitable in a popular govern- 
ment of a thinking people, as the people of Massachusetts 
proudly suppose themselves to be, that a great many mat- 
ters of legislation should be offered. How can government 
by the people be realized, and how can the body politic get 
the benefit of the wisdom and patriotism of its several 
members, unless fair consideration is accorded to the sug- 
gestions which those members offer for the betterment 
of their condition or for the improvement of the public 
administration ? 

A weighty reason for annual sessions is that the people 
should keep nearer their representatives than is possible by 
a biennial system. The quality of legislation is affected 
by the sense of nearness and annual accountability, Men 
who know that they are in their last term are more likely 
to disregard the voice of the people than if they expect to 
stand again for election. If legislators were elected only 
once in two years, each year of their service would have 
its distinct evil. The first year would see much bungling 
legislation due to the inexperience of the members; the 
second would be exposed to the selfish and mercenary acts 
of men who had little fear of accountability to their con- 
stituents. In the first year the evil would affect nearly all 
the members ; in the second, the proportion would certainly 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 133 

be material and would probably be decisive on the fate of 
important measures. Eepresentatives are prone to look out 
for themselves rather than for the public; and, unfortu- 
nately, there is too much reason to believe that there are 
mercenary men in every legislature who are open to im- 
proper influences. Perhaps they are a small proportion of 
the legislature numerically, but they are sufficient to tar- 
nish the reputation of every House and to be a standing 
disgrace to the Commonwealth. With a legislative session 
only once in two years, these men would have more disposi- 
tion than now to take advantage of the confusion and inex- 
perience which would prevail, and of the certainty that 
they would not again be candidates. Those who would 
resist corruption in one case might yield in another. With 
biennials the proportion of members exposed to this tempta- 
tion would be much greater than now. 

Not only would there be a higher plane of legislative 
morality in a body elected every year, but the needs of the 
people would receive more prompt and efficient attention. 
In each year members are now elected with some reference 
to local and current issues. National politics intervene to 
obscure these issues more or less, but local needs still have 
an effect, and the laws which are enacted have a reasonably 
close connection with the popular demand. But if the 
legislature were elected only once in two years the people 
would lose half their present opportunity to exert an influ- 
ence upon the law-making body. The current of organic 
vitality in the community, as it reveals itself in the change 
of laws at the demand of the people, would become less 
active. Its service to the growth of the community would 
be impeded. The popular will would have less opportunity 



134 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

for expression, and, expression being prevented, thought 
upon the problems of the times would become correspond- 
ingly useless, and the result, as a whole, could not be other- 
wise than a hindrance to the natural development of the 
body politic and a check to that alleviation of the ills of 
its poorer and weaker members which is always in progress 
with the growth of Christian civilization. 

One objection to annual sessions is the expense ; but this 
is not to be considered a moment compared with the good 
to be obtained by prompt attention to the wants of the 
people. The entire State tax in recent years has been but 
about 60 to 70 cents on $1000, while the remainder of the 
taxpayer's contribution to the public treasury for most of the 
cities and towns is from $12 to $15 on $1000. The saving 
in popular burdens by omitting one session of the legisla- 
ture would be too infinitesimal to consider ; for if the entire 
tax is so small, how much smaller would be the saving of 
the cost of a session once in two years, considering also the 
added length of the remaining session ! 

One of the retorts to the plea for annual sessions is that 
if the argument proves anything it proves that semi-annual 
sessions would be best, and so on to continuous sessions. 
This is advanced seriously by some. Perhaps it is reason- 
able ; perhaps, as the waste of the human body goes on all 
the time, it would be reasonable for all persons to be nib- 
bling all the time. There is reason in all things, or should 
be, — and this is a sufficient answer to that retort. 

Unquestionably, one of the strongest props of the bien- 
nial theory is the dislike of people to agitation and change. 
It is hard to keep up with the current of events and with 
the thought of the times. In fact, the average citizen can- 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 135 

not do it All lie can hope to do is to watch his own 
profession or business and note its progress. Business 
methods and ways of living and thinking get away from 
him unless he hurries to keep up. The laws, he feels, ought 
to be stable. But the rapid change which affects every 
profession and makes antiquated every one who is out of 
the current of thought for a few years operates no less 
actively in the community -life itself. It is the fact in the 
business world that machinery not half worn out must be 
replaced by new because recent inventions make it unprofit- 
able to use the old. Buildings in good repair and capable 
of rendering many years of service must be torn down, as 
is seen in Boston, to make room for the latest improvements 
in offices and in methods of construction. Besides this 
growth in the separate lines, there is a growth of the com- 
munity as a whole, which it would be folly to check. 
Lawyers hate to see a new Blue Book every year. Men 
object to new business methods where they do not see a 
direct personal advantage. Every one rebels at the thought 
of new laws to obey, new regulations to learn and observe. 
Yet this is the way the community grows, and the healthiest 
and most rapid growth is where the inner life has amplest 
room for expansion. Forces greater than we understand 
hurry us on, both in our private business methods and in 
our public relations. We cannot master them if we would. 
They are for the well-being of the State and of the nation. 
It is our duty to give them every opportunity for free action. 
We check and divert them to our injury only. We recog- 
nize them and promote them for our good. 

To sum up, the objections to annual sessions are founded 
upon mistaken beliefs as to facts and upon a conservatism 



136 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

which fails to recognize the growth of the community. 
These objections are of little weight compared with the 
reasons why there should be frequent opportunity for the 
popular will to assert itself in the forms of law, and for the 
popular intelligence to do its best toward the improvement 
of the State. It is not too much to say that the advance of 
Massachusetts — and the present argument is not for Massa- 
chusetts alone — is due in part to the frequency with which 
the popular will expresses itself for the betterment of her 
condition, and it is to be earnestly hoped that she will not 
make the mistake of adopting biennial legislative sessions. 

Biennial Elections. 

The other phase of the biennial problem is that of bien- 
nial State elections. At the outset the truth should be 
recognized that the legislature is nearer to the people than 
either of the other branches of the government. It is not 
necessary in this stage of development and of study of com- 
munity-growth to insist that there is a steady progress, that 
the times are changing, that the ideals of the people are 
undergoing constant alterations (for the better as we opti- 
mistically believe), that there are higher ideals of personal 
action, that business methods are more expeditious and 
efficient, that the body politic is raising up its lowliest 
members, and that the entire mass of our people is surely 
and steadily advancing to a higher type of civilization, 
whose realization many workers find in the full meaning of 
the word Christian, to which the State as a body politic has 
not yet nearly attained. Unless this growth toward an 
unrealized ideal is admitted, then the reasons for annual 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 137 

elections will not seem to be well founded. But assuming 
that this fact will not be denied, then the first pertinent 
consideration is that the legislature is the closest to the 
people of all the departments of our government. Its mem- 
bers are fresh from the elections, where they have been 
chosen to represent the people. They have been chosen 
upon issues. The voice of the majority, which is our prac- 
tical criterion of what is for the greatest benefit to the 
people, has selected the men who sit under the gilded dome, 
while the representatives of opposing views, each for his 
own locality, have been left at home. The growth of the 
community as a body politic is fostered by and finds its 
expression in its laws. Hence the question of the desira- 
bility of biennial State elections must be discussed, first of 
all, in its relation to the legislature, What effect will 
biennial elections have upon the enactment of the laws 
which promote the development of the State toward the 
unattained Christian ideal, and which are the expression of 
the collective intelligence and will of the people ? 

The first fact relative to the legislature to be noticed under 
biennial State elections is that the members would sit for 
two sessions without re-election, instead of one, supposing 
that the common sense of the people accepted the conclu- 
sion that annual sessions are essential to the growth of the 
State, as against biennials. This arrangement has been 
advocated by some writers on this subject. Governor 
Brackett, in his inaugural address in 1890, recommended 
' that there be a legislature chosen once in two years to hold 
an annual session, saying that " a legislature elected for 
two years and meeting annually would, at its second ses- 
sion, be composed wholly of experienced members. " But 



138 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

the reverse of the proposition is true, — that at its first ses- 
sion the legislature would be practically composed wholly 
of inexperienced members. More than this, the experience 
which it would have in its second session would be only 
that learned by observation of the errors of its own inex- 
perience; whereas, by the present system of annual elec- 
tions, the experience gained is by observation of the tradi- 
tions and customs which are handed down, with more or 
less improvement, from year to year, and which are the 
result of the accumulated trials and wisdom of a century. 
These methods are easily followed, in the main, for hi every 
house about one-third of the members have seen service 
before, while every Senate is composed, by a large majority, 
of men who have served in the House. The strong prob- 
ability is that the inexperience in the first session of a legis- 
lature elected under the biennial system would far more 
than offset the questionable experience which would be 
their supposed leading qualification in the second session. 
The members in the first session would be ignorant of their 
duties. They would be totally unfamiliar with legislative 
methods. The rules of procedure, whicb are of constant 
application every hour of the session, would have little 
place in their minds. Yet those rules, the growth of cen- 
turies of parliamentary practice, are indispensable to the 
prompt and correct dispatch of business. The members 
would not know the history of matters presented. They 
would not be able to exercise proper discrimination between 
the persons appearing before the committees, being without 
that acquaintance which discerns the mere idle talker from 
the business man, a few of whose sensible words are wort] 
hours of advice from the other. With an honest attempt t< 



: 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 189 

satisfy the wants of the people in legislation, it cannot be 
questioned, it seems to me, that business would be greatly 
delayed and poorly done, and that there would be confu- 
sion, omissions, and blunders more than now, in the Public 
Statutes. In -their second session these legislators would 
have only themselves to learn from. What hope, then, 
of better legislation than we have now, when there are 
always experienced men enough to conduct the business of 
the two branches, to serve as chairmen of committees, and 
to take the brunt of the labors, leaving the new men free to 
learn in a better way than by their own mistakes ? 

This is not saying, by any means, that the present system 
is perfect. It is not. But the present system is the result 
of many years of experience on the part of the men whom 
the average sense of the people has sent to the legislature, 
— men who have been spurred on to do their best by their 
own conscience, intelligence, and ambition, by the pressure 
of public sentiment upon them, and by the constant upbraid- 
ings and lashings of nearly all the press of the State. The 
system can be improved, but there would be little hope of 
better things from a biennially-elected legislature with 
annual sessions. 

The weight of this consideration, it will at once be urged, 
turns upon the question whether the people would or would 
not elect members to more than one term of service. If 
members were re-elected for second terms as now, or even 
approximately, as now, then the objection would fall and 
the argument from experience alone would favor the change. 
But no one who has watched the course of legislative nom- 
inations for years can have the slightest hesitation in saying 
that members who had served two years would not be re- 



140 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

elected. Ample demonstration is found in our present prac- 
tice. In the city districts it is the custom to re-elect 
valuable members to a second term. Third terms are com- 
paratively rare. But in the country districts the practice is 
general of electing the members for only one year, no matter 
how meritorious the service has been. This is due to local 
jealousy and ambition in part, and in part to personal ambi- 
tion. After every decennial redistricting, it occurs in many 
districts that representatives of the towns thus newly thrown 
together meet and apportion the number of years in the com- 
ing ten for which each town shall have the representative, 
and establish the order in which the rotation shall be fol- 
lowed. This plan is adhered to as closely as the exigencies 
and casualties of politics permit, to the loss of the district 
in the efficiency of its representatives and to the injury of 
the State in not having experienced legislative ability at its 
command, but to the aggrandizement of the local lawyer or 
manufacturer and to the vindication of the right of the town 
to take its " turn " in representation in the Great and General 
Court. Though the cities now often give their representa- 
tives two terms of one year each, with members elected for 
one term of two years the personal ambition of waiting 
aspirants would doubtless prevent a re-election in most cases 
for two years more. That members would not be re-elected 
to any material extent under this biennial system is practi- 
cally settled beforehand. 

Another consideration relative to annual sessions of a 
biennially-elected legislature is that in the second session, 
at which the members would have the benefit of the poor 
experience of their first session, they would be required to 
act upon many questions upon which they would not have 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 141 

the voice of the people. More than a year would have 
elapsed since their election. The phases of existing issues 
would certainly have changed somewhat during the inter- 
val. Some wholly new questions would have sprung up. 
Each member desires to represent his constituents. As a 
rule, he is a member because he represents their opinions 
on broad questions. On local matters he may represent one 
of two sharply opposed courses. He aims, as a rule, to fol- 
low the voice of the people. It is the majority, speaking 
through him, who make the laws. But at the second ses- 
sion of a biennially-elected legislature there would have 
been no opportunity for the popular voice to be heard, and 
to that extent laws would be enacted upon which there had 
been no popular expression, either as regards State policy or 
neighborhood dissension. Such legislation would involve 
the probability of further agitation, either for amendment 
or repeal. It would be complicated with other pending 
issues which had arisen in their turn, and a settlement would 
imply compromises or injustice. The correct course in dis- 
posing of public issues is to settle them, one at a time, each 
on its own merits, and then let every new question be dis- 
cussed as it deserves, so that new divisions and new party 
alignments can be made. This is a sure way to prevent 
corrupt log-rolling. It expedites the settlement of popular 
issues and promotes the development of the State. To sum- 
marize, — with a legislature of the type proposed, the first 
session would be seriously affected by the inexperience of 
the members, by the mistakes they would certainly make in 
the formation of their bills, and by the confusion and waste 
of time inevitable with so many new men, while the second 
session, which could have the benefit of only inferior experi- 



142 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

ence, would have to remedy the defects of the first, would be 
more liable to corrupt influence, and would be at the dis- 
advantage of a year's further remove from the people, who 
are the true source of legislation and whose voice must 
ultimately be regarded. 

We now come to the relation of biennial State elections 
to the chief executive of the State. Here is where the pro- 
posed change has one of its strongest roots, apparently, in 
the minds of its advocates. The governor, it is said, does 
not have time enough in one year to develop any policy; 
he is no more than seated before politicians are planning 
about his successor; desire of a second term controls his 
course in his first, and the people do not have the benefit of 
his independent action ; if the term were two years he would 
have opportunity to formulate and to develop a policy. 

This is plausible, but it will not bear examination. 
Higher than the governor are the people, and they are 
represented in the legislature. If biennial elections are, on 
the whole, injurious to the legislature and to the proper care 
of the people's interests, that superior consideration should 
settle the matter, even if the argument for a two-years' term 
for the governor were as sound as it is plausible. But it is 
not. Much has been said recently in favor of strengthening 
the governor. Attention has been called to the constant 
encroachment of the legislative department upon the execu- 
tive, and there is no doubt of the fact that the governorship 
tends to become a less important office, no matter what 
exceptions there may be in the cases of brilliant individual 
incumbents. This tendency is inevitable and it is right. 
The executive carries out the will of the people. He is 
their servant. Their collective intelligence is better than 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 143 

his individual judgment. Their decision is conclusive. 
Their will is supreme. To meet emergencies the governor 
has a veto, bat no man has a permanent check upon the 
popular will. He is made governor to execute that will ; 
that is his policy, and his plans must be made within exist- 
ing laws. It is for the people to change the laws, not for 
the governor. Reforms come from the people, not, as a 
rule, from our governors. It is for the governor, as head of 
the administration of the laws which are made by the 
people, to point out how that administration may be im- 
proved. Such recommendations come within his province, 
but anything which he may offer further is an impertinence 
and worth only what it would be worth as coming from a 
private citizen. His function is far inferior to that of the 
legislator. Development of the State as an organism inev- 
itably comes from the mass of the people, and wherever 
existing law operates to restrain any in the pursuit of liberty 
and property not at the injury of his fellows, there is a 
point where legislative action is needed to break the old 
bark of the tree and permit freedom of action according to 
the law of the inner life. No governor within my recollec- 
tion has been elected because he was the agitator and inau- 
gurator of a positive reform, but at most only because he has 
been a representative of a reform for which there was a 
demand which he did not create. Our governors are not 
elected because they are leaders whom the mass of the 
people follow. No such men have existed in this genera- 
tion ; and as the education and independence of our people 
advance, there is small prospect that such will be found 
hereafter. At most, they will be exceptions to the rule, 
and it is undesirable to legislate for exceptions. Any gov- 



144 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

ernor's policy must be within certain narrow limits ; and as 
it is to be supposed, judging from the past and relying upon 
the common-sense of the people, that the people will choose 
their governors from men who have had experience in State 
matters or in governmental administration of some sort, it 
is not necessary that 'they should have a year in which to 
become accustomed to the office, or in which to formulate a 
policy. Doubtless there would be greater familiarity with 
office in the second year, wider experience in the manage- 
ment of public institutions, and acquaintance with a larger 
circle of aspirants to office. These considerations have some 
weight, but not much if the governor is fit for his first year, 
and especially not much in comparison with other interests. 
If the governor so acts in his first term as to secure a re- 
election, he is in the main only doing as well as he can, 
which he is bound to do in any event. Such a considera- 
tion is in favor of frequent returns to the people. But there 
is a sufficient reply to the objection that the governor has 
not in one year a sufficient opportunity to develop his 
policy. It is the strong probability (which has been a fact 
in recent years) that if the governor fills his office well he will 
be re-elected. Massachusetts practically illustrates this. 

On the other hand, if the term of the governor were two 
years, the people would lose invaluable opportunities for the 
expression of a needed popular judgment. Let us take a 
recent case for illustration. A material factor in the defeat 
of Governor Brackett in his candidacy for a second term 
was unquestionably his failure to veto the West End charter 
for a street railway in Boston after a legislative investiga- 
tion had proved that the bill was passed by means of a 
profuse use of money, by the extensive employment of : : 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 145 

lobbyists, and by the exertion of improper influence upon 
the members of the legislature. The judgment of the 
people, powerless to defeat or annul the act, found expres- 
sion in the rejection of the governor, who failed to satisfy 
the popular demand for action in this emergency. By the 
annual election this popular judgment was emphasized. 
Under a biennial system, later events would have removed 
the impression or have confused the issues, and the lesson 
would have been lost. 

The effect of biennial elections upon the judiciary of the 
State does not seem to be an important consideration, com- 
pared with the effect upon other departments of the govern- 
ment. As far as a biennially-elected legislature performed 
its work improperly, enacting laws which were confused, 
obscure, or contradictory, so far the duties of the judges 
would be increased and their discharge would be unsatisfac- 
tory. But biennial elections would not touch this depart- 
ment closely. 

One reason for annual elections which is emphasized by 
their friends, but is made of no account by their opponents, 
is that such elections exert an indispensable educational 
effect upon the people. Doubtless such an effect is worth 
a heavy cost, and the appreciation of such education is most 
proper. But it seems unnecessary to rely much upon that 
argument for annual elections because the education is 
secured in obtaining the more direct objects of elections. 
The workingman has no need of physical exercise for its 
own sake, because he gets enough of it in his work If 
a man gets no such exercise in his usual work, then he 
must make physical exertion solely for the sake of the 
exercise. If the education of the people in self-govern- 

10 



146 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

ment could be secured only by annual elections, then that 
end would amply justify such means ; but the solution of 
pressing problems demands annual elections, and in the 
political work which must be done, the political body gets 
its needed exercise or education. 

The objections to annual elections will be found sum- 
marized, as follows, by the Hon. Henry L. Pierce in his 
argument of March 20, 1890, in favor of biennial elections 
and legislative sessions, made before the legislative com- 
mittee on constitutional amendments. He said : — 

" The admitted evils of the present system, concisely stated, 
are, first, incessant political agitation ; second, overmuch legis- 
lation ; third, instability and uncertainty in the laws ; fourth, 
unnecessary and wasteful expenditure of money." 

The second of these objections is met by the considera- 
tions in the article on biennial legislative sessions. Some of 
our legislation is remedial of errors due to carelessness and 
ignorance, part of which might be avoided and part of which 
is inevitable with the limitations of a popular government 
and never can be reformed away, except in a degree. The 
remainder of legislation is due to the legitimate growth of 
the State, and, as already said, the idea that there is too 
much legislation of this sort is in conflict with the demands 
of the people for more legislation, — demands which are 
imperative and loudly heard at the State House in spite 
of the interests of all petitioners to keep away from the 
legislature otherwise. 

The third objection is sound as far as it goes, but insta- 
bility and uncertainty are inevitable in a State whose wants 
are growing rapidly, whose inventions are constantly shift- 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 147 

ing the relations of business men to each other, and whose 
people are continually moving away from the customs of 
their fathers. It is an evil that children should grow, 
because they outgrow their clothes before they are worn out ; 
it increases the expense and the inconvenience of providing 
for them. But the evils of changing clothes and of chang- 
ing laws must be borne with as much economy and philos- 
ophy as possible, remembering that to check the growth 
which necessitates the changes would be folly. 

The fourth objection of " unnecessary and wasteful expen- 
diture of money " is also true in a sense. Certainly money 
will be spent unnecessarily and wastefully in annual polit- 
ical elections. So it would be in biennials, or quadren- 
nials. But the pertinent question is, is the election worth 
the expense ? On one side the weight of the argument can 
be measured with some approach to exactness, especially 
since the passage of the act to prevent corrupt practices in 
elections. It is so many dollars and cents. Allowing more 
for the time lost in political agitation, and more yet for the 
sum not reported under the corrupt practices act, which 
every reader may estimate to suit himself, the question 
still remains, does the good of the State demand this 
expense? My answer is, without hesitation, that it does, 
and would warrant a much larger expense if the end were 
not to be gained otherwise. In the unfolding of the reasons 
for this will come the answer to the first objection to annual 
elections named above, — " incessant political agitation. " 

We are to-day more than ever face to face with the fact 
that we do not know what there is in the organization of 
society as a whole. We do not yet see the point clearly (the 
mass of us do not, whatever may be true of prophetic states- 



148 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

men) toward which the organic unity of the human race is 
tending. We look back and see a marvellous development 
in the forms of government, almost invariably connected 
with the overthrow of human despotism, with the struggle 
of tyrants for their individual power, with the manifesta- 
tion of patriotic heroism and with the sacrifice of countless 
lives whose dying energy has been perpetuated in the insti- 
tutions they have founded. We have reached to-day the 
point of a representative republic whose ultimate atoms are 
local democracies. Under the despots of the overthrown 
governments elections have been unknown. Neither annual 
nor biennial legislatures were wanted or had, nor did the 
people have anything to say regarding their political status. 
Step by step, with " the protest of corpses " at every point 
against the old regime, the worth of the judgment of the 
many against the few has asserted itself ; the right of the 
many against the privilege of the few has won its bloody 
victories. Now, with the collective will and wisdom of 
the majority as at least our nominal guide, we stand at the 
point in our growth where this will is more active than ever, 
and where this wisdom finds more problems before it than 
were dreamed of in the days when our present form of gov- 
ernment rose triumphant over the inferior monarchy. Our 
political thought is more active than ever. Our business 
interests are more complicated, divergent, and enormous. 
The accumulation of wealth is more rapid. The elevation 
of the lowly in material prosperity is higher than the past 
ever knew. Our growth is from a centre outward, as it 
were of a sphere, not in one contracted line. Every enlarge- 
ment brings new problems. These problems are forced upon 
us. We cannot help ourselves, save by denying our exist- 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 149 

ence as rational and progressive beings and by refusing to 
go forward. We are in the grasp of forces which go back 
through recorded history beyond the mists of tradition, — 
forces too mighty and comprehensive for us, which are 
sweeping us on, willing or unwilling, knowing or unknow- 
ing, to some distant goal. We stand to-day in the presence 
of governmental problems which we cannot solve, but whose 
solution will doubtless come with the progress of the State 
in the science of government. Yet that progress is an 
organic growth. What extent of growth and what fulness 
of prosperity are bound up in the future for organized 
humanity we can only surmise. One day we establish 
governmental control of the post-offices ; on another the 
State puts highways under the authority of the towns, 
instead of in the care of turnpike companies; on another 
we assert organic control of our water supplies, instead of 
leaving them the property of private persons. Shall we go 
on to take the railroads next, and the express business 
(much of which is even now creeping into the mail-bags 
away from corporate operation), the gas, the telegraph and 
telephone, and so on ? Shall the State thus solve the prob- 
lems which are involved in the community's serving itself 
as an organism, instead of being served by its private con- 
stituent members ? Shall the organized community extend 
its care for its ignorant members beyond the present system 
of education, as it is tentatively doing with its manual and 
industrial training ? Shall it care for its poor beyond the 
present system of pauper relief and prevent them from 
becoming paupers? Whither are the forces of organized 
humanity sweeping us ? Tribes have advanced in civiliza- 
tion. Small communities have grown to local States, States 



150 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

to nations, and nations to alliances and to a recognized 
international law, their growth being, in every case, 
from an inner law, which may or may not have been 
expressed in a written constitution. This growth has been 
constant, and seems to be advancing to-day more rapidly 
than ever. 

But the community finds its voice only in elections. 
Legislatures are its only representatives. . Laws are its 
only expression. Whatever may have been true of the 
slower times of the past, to-day the agitation in the realm 
of organic community-action is greater than then. The will 
of the community is more and more finding expression in 
its natural way, — in its laws. Writers in Massachusetts 
protest against State commissions, but, with doubtless a 
popular indorsement of their argument, the number of com- 
missions is constantly growing in the very teeth of the pro- 
test. The outlook is for the extension of government into 
the realm of highways this year, into something else next 
year, and so on, with no end in sight. In the nation the 
growth of departments is steady. The original cabinet has 
been enlarged by taking in new officers ; the department of 
agriculture has been added recently ; the merchants and busi- 
ness men now show strong reasons for a new cabinet officer 
for a department of commerce ; other nations have still other 
departments represented in their cabinets, hinting at what 
may be needed by ourselves. At all points the government 
is enlarging its contact with the affairs of the people. That 
is, the people, as an organic whole, are doing more and more 
for themselves that which is for their comfort and pros- 
perity. We seem to have barely entered upon this career, 
so numerous are the avenues for governmental action com- 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 151 

pared with the field of governmental exercise in the past. 
Every year brings some new phase of progress. It may not 
bring triumph, because in some matters years are needed for 
the education of the popular intelligence, for organizing and 
compacting into an effective body the friends of a particular 
reform ; but it does bring growth. The time and the agita- 
tion are not wasted, and they have their fruition in the 
larger rights and comforts for many people who would have 
had to wait longer if frequent elections had not favored 
their cause. This truth is seen in the ten-hour law, in the 
body of factory and sanitary legislation, in the weekly -pay- 
ments law, in the State board of arbitration and concilia- 
tion, in the employers' liability act, in the protection to 
women and minors, in the closer restriction of the sale of 
liquor, in the development of the school system of the 
State, in the regulation of the use of electrical inventions, 
in the encouragement of business enterprises, in the improve- 
ment of our voting system, in the restriction of corrupt elec- 
tion practices, and so on through a long list. These gains 
could not have been secured, as fully as to-day, under a 
biennial system. They are of incalculable worth, but the 
objection to their cost can be measured in dollars and cents. 
Such an objection cannot be sound. 

Every step of progress by the State is an advance over 
some obstacle, a throwing off of some weight, an attain- 
ment of a larger sense of what is involved in the relations 
of men to each other in an organic whole. These weights 
which the State is throwing off are so many hindrances to 
the well-being of every individual in the State. How much 
more rapid will be the community development when the 
level already in sight shall have been attained ? But who 



152 BIENNIAL ELECTIONS. 

can tell whether an end will ever be reached to the solution 
of State problems ? To-day it is the cry of the poor which 
is heard. To-day the effort is to raise the great mass of the 
people to the wealth and comfort of the more favored few. 
The current of progress does not turn backward. When 
this problem is solved, if ever, will any one predict that 
other problems will not as urgently demand solution? The 
occasions of organic action now could not have been pre- 
dicted by the men who made the constitution. Why should 
any one now undertake to say that there will be a stoppage 
of State development, so that the body politic will have 
fewer wants than now ? 

The State, humanity in its organic capacity, is well repre- 
sented by the Sphinx. It is in part composed of the animal 
nature, but its head is human and erect. Humanity is 
beginning to realize its oneness. It is asserting its right 
to act as a whole, and to interfere for the protection of its 
constituent individuals. In the face of all the talk against 
too much government, the unfoldings of the times show 
larger and larger interventions of the State as a whole in 
the social and business affairs of its people. To-day the 
outlook for the continuance of such interventions is wider 
and clearer than ever. In proportion as these interventions 
extend so must there be frequent and intelligent exercise 
of the knowledge and the will of the State in securing its 
development according to the laws it is obeying, which are 
the laws of God. If ever the future brings a solution of all 
the problems in sight, if the race seems to have reached its 
goal, then will be time for it to enjoy in ease the fruits of 
its growth ; but in this era, with the unsolved questions of 
State life more numerous than ever, and with the true 



BIENNIAL ELECTIONS AND LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS. 153 

nature of organized humanity becoming more clearly seen, 
it is the worst time to think of adopting a policy which 
shall in any way restrict the growth of the human organism 
to its Christian ideal, which is bringing larger good to 
every citizen. 



THE END. 



